(778a) Immobilization of Vesicles Incorporated with Aquaporins Onto Polymeric Membranes for Low Energy Water Purification

AQPs are transmembrane water channel proteins. Their unique selectivity, high water transport capability, and low activation energy have garnered strong scientific interests with many studies concentrating on the fabrication of biomimetic membranes based on the reconstitution of water channel proteins into self-assembled amphiphilic lipid or polymer bilayers.  It has been reported that the osmotic permeability of a single aquaporin is in the range from 6×10^-14 to 24×10^-14 m³ s^-1, and the permeability of an AQPs reconstituted biomimetic membrane is 167 um/s/bar, which is by two orders of magnitude greater than the commercial polymeric membranes. It is clear that aquaporin-incorporated biomimetic membranes possess an extremely high potential for water purification and desalination. However, the chief limitation of the biomimetic membrane is that the ultrathin biomimetic bilayers are too fragile to withstand high hydraulic or osmotic pressure in the water purification application. Here we show an innovative yet simple and easy-to-implement method to overcome the membrane fragility by immobilizing water-channel proteins incorporated vesicles into pre-fabricated membranes to develop advanced membrane materials for purifying water at low pressures and low energy. We show that this novel membrane exhibits high mechanical strength and stability during nanofiltration process and AQPs made contribution to the water performance.