Plasmonic Pervaporation for Sustainable Mixture Separation

Membrane separation provides a potential alternative to distillation, which consumes roughly 40% of the energy used in the chemical and refining industries according to the United States Department of Energy, for separating liquid-liquid mixtures. While providing better separation, current membrane separation techniques are not as energy efficient as distillation. This work seeks to improve the energy efficiency of purifying solvents by coupling the effects of localized plasmonic heating on a membrane with pervaporation, a common membrane separation technique, using polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) thin-films. Localized plasmonic heating results from the decay of a plasmon that was created when the resonant wavelength of light irradiates gold nanoparticles (AuNP). Preliminary results in a lab-scale, pervaporation system suggest that the combination of these two techniques may be able to facilitate a higher level of mass transfer or flux across membranes.