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Project

Epoxides as novel platform chemistry for chemically robust water purification membranes

Desalination membranes have the potential to help alleviate the global water crisis as they allow the production of fresh water from saline or waste waters. Polyamide membranes have been the state of the art for 40 years, but have failed to expand to new application fields due to their limited chemical stability. A new generation of chemically robust, salt-rejecting membranes is thus highly desired for applications in harsh aqueous media (e.g., oxidizing, acidic, and caustic conditions, solvent-containing waters, and cleaning products).

The key objective of this postdoc is to take advantage of the high chemical resistance of epoxide-based polymers to fabricate the first water purification membranes offering both high salt selectivity and excellent chemical robustness. Recently, the applicant reported a proof-of-concept epoxide-based membrane using interfacial polymerization. Here, epoxide interfacial polymerization will be developed as a novel platform chemistry for membrane synthesis by investigating innovative polymerization conditions and strategies, establishing membrane synthesis-property-performance relationships, and elucidating ion transport mechanisms. These fundamental insights combined with the high versatility of epoxide chemistry will yield tailor-made membranes that will be tested for challenging applications, such as the desalination of chlorine-containing sea waters and the selective removal of rare earth metals from acid mine effluents. 

Date:1 Nov 2021 →  Today
Keywords:chemically robust water purification membranes
Disciplines:Chemical characterisation of materials, (Waste)water treatment processes, Materials synthesis, Polymer processing