This critical review investigates the potential for membrane distillation to desalinate high-salinity waters using low-grade heat at the water-energy nexus.
Nanofiltration (NF) membranes with ultrahigh permeance and high rejection are highly beneficial for efficient desalination and wastewater treatment. Improving water permeance while maintaining the high rejection of state-of-the-art thin film composite (TFC) NF membranes remains a great challenge. Herein, we report the fabrication of a TFC NF membrane with a crumpled polyamide (PA) layer via interfacial polymerization on a single-walled carbon nanotubes/polyether sulfone composite support loaded with nanoparticles as a sacrificial templating material, using metal-organic framework nanoparticles (ZIF-8) as an example. The nanoparticles, which can be removed by water dissolution after interfacial polymerization, facilitate the formation of a rough PA active layer with crumpled nanostructure. The NF membrane obtained thereby exhibits high permeance up to 53.5 l m−2h−1 bar−1 with a rejection above 95% for Na2SO4, yielding an overall desalination performance superior to state-of-the-art NF membranes reported so far. Our work provides a simple avenue to fabricate advanced PA NF membranes with outstanding performance.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.