Frontiers of Engineering Reports on Leading-Edge Engineering from the 2016 Symposium (2017) / Chapter Skim
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Water Desalination: History, Advances, and Challenges - Manish Kumar, Tyler Culp, and Yuexiao Shen
Water Desalination: History, Advances, and Challenges - Manish Kumar, Tyler Culp, and Yuexiao Shen
Pages 55-68
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From page 55... ...
It reviews the emergence of membranes as the preferred technology for desalination, recent advances, challenges to its sustainable implementation, and needs for further research. INTRODUCTION Desalination represents a promise of near unlimited water supply and is an attractive potential solution to the age-old conundrum of seawater abundance and practical inaccessibility for potable use.
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From page 56... ...
It has also raised awareness and catalyzed the implementation of wastewater reuse, where wastewater is treated to a high quality and in some cases used for direct or indirect potable reuse. Desalination is thus a critical technology for humanity to allow for sustainable development.
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From page 57... ...
The most common distillation-based desalination methods are thermally driven technologies, including multistage flash distillation, multiple-effect distillation, and mechanical vapor compression processes. In these processes water is evaporated by the addition of heat and in many cases assisted by the use of vacuum.
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From page 58... ...
. As is evident from this figure, RO is a substantially more energyefficient technology for water desalination.
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From page 59... ...
Hollow-fiber modules containing thin fibers were developed a few years later by DuPont, but this configuration is less commonly used for RO. A major advance in membrane chemistry that has made possible the application of RO membranes is the development of the thin film composite (TFC)
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From page 60... ...
thanks to improvements in formulation, manufacturing procedures, and processes, such as energy recovery from pressurized brine. These advances rapidly enhanced sustainability and exponentially increased the implementation of these membranes for seawater and brackish water desalination as well as wastewater reuse.
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From page 61... ...
. On the other hand, advances in permeability and selectivity can still yield major gains in brackish water treatment and wastewater reuse.
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From page 62... ...
, AQPs are highly water selective due to their small pore size (~3 Å) and the presence of amino acid residues that reject charged ions (Agre et al.
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From page 63... ...
They have been integrated into membranes, but these membranes face scaleup challenges. We have recently shown that specific artificial water channels, peptide-appended pillar[5]
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From page 64... ...
Several membrane modification strategies are under consideration to reduce membrane fouling in RO systems. These include the grafting of superhydrophilic or amphiphilic molecules that can prevent adsorption of macromolecules and biological cells; use of nanoparticles, carbon-based materials such as CNTs, and graphene oxide flakes to impart biocidal properties to the RO membrane surface; and use of electroactive or magnetically actuated surfaces to prevent deposition or cause cell death.
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From page 65... ...
A particular challenge to the development of seawater desalination plants (including RO plants) is the impingement and entrainment of marine microorganisms during intake to the plant.
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From page 66... ...
OUTLOOK Membrane desalination technology is growing rapidly and becoming a critical tool for ensuring long-term water sustainability around the world. There is intense scientific interest in improving the sustainability of this technology, and several innovations are looking to further reduce the technique's power consumption and barriers to widespread use and sustainability.
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From page 67... ...
2016. Salt-excluding artificial water channels exhibiting enhanced dipolar water and proton translocation.
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