Frappa M, Del Rio Castillo AE, Macedonio F, Politano A, Drioli E, Bonaccorso F, Pellegrini V, Gugliuzza A. A few-layer graphene for advanced composite PVDF membranes dedicated to water desalination: a comparative study.
NANOSCALE ADVANCES 2020;
2:4728-4739. [PMID:
36132930 PMCID:
PMC9417500 DOI:
10.1039/d0na00403k]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/19/2020] [Accepted: 08/15/2020] [Indexed: 05/12/2023]
Abstract
Membrane distillation is envisaged to be a promising best practice to recover freshwater from seawater with the prospect of building low energy-consuming devices powered by natural and renewable energy sources in remote and less accessible areas. Moreover, there is an additional benefit of integrating this green technology with other well-established operations dedicated to desalination. Today, the development of membrane distillation depends on the productivity-efficiency ratio on a large scale. Despite hydrophobic commercial membranes being widely used, no membrane with suitable morphological and chemical feature is readily available in the market. Thus, there is a real need to identify best practices for developing new efficient membranes for more productive and eco-sustainable membrane distillation devices. Here, we propose engineered few-layer graphene membranes, showing enhanced trans-membrane fluxes and total barrier action against NaCl ions. The obtained performances are linked with filling polymeric membranes with few-layer graphene of 490 nm in lateral size, produced by the wet-jet milling technology. The experimental evidence, together with comparative analyses, confirmed that the use of more largely sized few-layer graphene leads to superior productivity related efficiency trade-off for the membrane distillation process. Herein, it was demonstrated that the quality of exfoliation is a crucial factor for addressing the few-layer graphene supporting the separation capability of the host membranes designed for water desalination.
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