Anagrafe della ricerca

"The production of fresh water from unconventional sources has a crucial role to play, as clean water becomes an increasingly valuable resource in 21st century. In particular, water desalination would represent an ideal solution except for the tremendous capital costs associated with current projects, which render desalination all but unaffordable for many countries. The ancillary processes involved in desalination have already been intensively optimized in past decades; yet despite some progress, a breakthrough in reverse osmosis (RO) membranes is necessary in order to turn desalination into an environmentally benign and economically affordable solution for water supply. The energy footprint and cost of desalinated water is directly related to the intrinsic performance of the RO membranes, in particular their water permeability. This performance is a materials science problem whose fundamental physical underpinnings remain poorly understood. As a result, commercial RO membranes have relied on the same polyamide-based chemistry for the past four decades. As such, recent insights into the ultra-thin, nanoporous materials offer opportunities to pioneer new paradigms in the science and engineering of RO membranes. In this proposal, we wish to explore a highly manufacturable form of ultra-thin nanoporous membranes for desalination. In particular, we strive to computationally investigate and optimize reduced graphene oxide (rGO) membranes for water filtration technologies as a potential low-cost nanoporous material. rGO is formed when oxygen is removed from graphene oxide (GO) either thermally or chemically. During GO reduction pores are formed in the layered structured that can serve as nanopores for desalination. Aim of this project is to understand the best reduction environment to create in a controllable manner nanopore formation in rGO, so to obtain membranes with enhanced water filtration capabilities