Developing new membrane materials can be widely used in fields such as seawater desalination
Changchun, April 20th (Xinhua) -- Chinese and American researchers have made significant progress in the research direction of reverse osmosis membrane water treatment. They have developed a new membrane material - polyester membrane material, which has broad application prospects in fields such as seawater desalination and municipal wastewater purification. On the 20th, it was learned from Northeast Normal University that two researchers from the university participated in the research, and the results were recently published in Science.
This achievement was jointly completed by Professor Zhang Xuan from Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Huo Mingxin from the School of Environment at Northeast Normal University, Wang Xianze's team, and Professor Menachem Elimelech (Yale University), a member of the American Academy of Engineering. The paper is titled "More resilient polyester membranes for high-performance reverse osmosis desalination".
It is crucial to increase the amount of recycled water by treating municipal wastewater and desalinating seawater from unconventional sources to alleviate global water scarcity. The academic community generally believes that the current factors restricting the development of reverse osmosis include insufficient removal rate of neutral small molecules, susceptibility to organic/inorganic pollution, low tolerance to oxidants such as active chlorine, and susceptibility to chemical degradation.
