Fabrication of aquaporin-based biomimetic membrane for seawater desalination

• Main Authors: Li, Ye, Qi, Saren, Tian, Miao, Widjajanti, Wentalia, Wang, Rong
• Other Authors: School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2021
• Subjects: Engineering::Environmental engineering; Biomimetic Membrane; Aquaporin
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/150372
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This study focuses on enhancing the mechanical strength of aquaporin (AQP)-based biomimetic membranes for seawater desalination. AQP incorporated vesicles were embedded into the selective layer of an optimized thin film composite (TFC) membrane. The resultant membrane, denoted as ASW, exhibited a stable water flux around 20 L·m−2·h−1 and 99% NaCl rejection at a constant pressure of 55 bar using 32,000 mg·L−1 NaCl solution as feed in reverse osmosis (RO) measurement. The robustness of the ASW membranes were evaluated. The water flux of ASW membrane was almost 100% enhanced compared with that of AQP-free control TFC membranes. The filtration performance of the ASW membrane was further evaluated by a seven-day desalination test using a real seawater secondary effluent collected from a desalination plant in Singapore as feed. To our best knowledge, our study is the first report on the AQP-incorporated RO membrane applied for seawater desalination. A commercial SW30HR membrane was tested in parallel for comparison. The robust ASW membrane exhibited a nearly 80% higher water flux in comparison to the SW30HR membrane with a comparable overall solute rejection, suggesting the advantage and feasibility of Aquaporin based biomimetic membranes for seawater desalination.