(750e) Bioinspired Micro/Nano-Structure Composited Membrane for High Saline Water Membrane Distillation

High saline water separation and purification are imperative to solve the global water concern, alleviate fresh water scarcity and water resources pollution. Classic saline solution treatment technologies, such as reverse osmosis (RO) cannot be used to treat high concentration wastewater due to the ultrahigh osmotic pressure and operation cost. Moreover, the residue solution of RO will generate the further environmental deterioration. Membrane distillation (MD) has emerged as a promising technology for comprehensive treatment of high saline water, owing to its low sensitivity to saline concentrations, outstanding energy efficiency and high device integration.

Herein, a new membrane distillation (MD) utilized membrane with bioinspired micro/nano-structure (lotus leaf and fish gill) was constructed on commercial PP membrane, which can simultaneously enhance the permeation flux and anti-fouling in the hypersaline MD operation. This bioinspired hybrid micro/nano-structures on MD utilized membrane combining superhydrophobic high evaporative area for enhanced permeation and intense micro-nano scale turbulent flow to hinder the crystal deposition and robust antifouling ability, which works like the fish gill. The outstanding superhydrophobicity and optimized micro/nano rough structure render the membrane surface high induction nucleation barrier closed to the homogenous system, which effectively hinders the heterogenous induced nucleation and subsequent fouling phenomenon. The resultant F-nmSiO₂-PP/N-3# membranes showed simultaneously enhanced water permeation flux of 22 kg/(m²âˆ™h), along with superior scaling resistance and the induction time was about 9 times that of the original PP membrane. In terms of antifouling interface than some current typical MD membranes, and the developed membrane preparation method was extremely simple and efficient via carried out on the commonly commercial PP membrane.