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Frontiers of Engineering Reports on Leading-Edge Engineering from the 2016 Symposium (2017) / Chapter Skim
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Scalable Manufacturing of Layer-by-Layer Membranes for Water Purification - Christopher M. Stafford
Pages 69-74

The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.


From page 69...
... This was highlighted recently when the Obama administration hosted the White House Water Summit to raise awareness of water availability concerns across the United States and to engage stakeholders in identifying long-term solutions for water production and management suitable for investment. BACKGROUND Water availability is not a new issue.
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From page 70...
... Given that water covers 71 percent of Earth's surface and 97 percent of that water is in the world's oceans, an obvious focal point of research is desalination, the recovery of water from high-salinity water sources. This can be an energyintensive process because of the high osmotic pressure of seawater: the average sea surface salinity is 35,000  g/L (for simplicity, let's assume it is all sodium chloride)
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From page 71...
... Thus, understanding of how these membranes work is insufficient to allow the rational design of next-generation membranes. In 2011 my research team at NIST proposed a paradigm shift in how these types of membranes are fabricated, in which the selective layer is created layer by layer through a reactive deposition process.
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From page 72...
... onto a solid substrate through an automated spin coating process. We observed growth rates of approximately 0.34 nm/cycle, where one cycle represents a single (A + B)
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From page 73...
... For example, the active layer must be coated onto a microporous support layer; thus a method for adequately preventing intrusion of the reactants into the underlying support must be devised. Also, the polyamide network topology needs to be optimized to allow the highest flux of water while maintaining adequate rejection of salt.
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From page 74...
... Journal of Polymer Science, Part B: Polymer Physics 48:1685–1718. Gu J-E, Lee S, Stafford CM, Lee JS, Choi W, Kim B-Y, Baek K-Y, Chan EP, Chung JY, Bang J, Lee J-H.
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Key Terms

  • osmotic pressure
  • clean water
  • water flux
  • applied pressure
  • membrane technology

  • membrane thickness
  • semipermeable membrane
  • layer deposition
  • paradigm shift
  • porous support

  • concentrated salt
  • deposition process
  • selective layer
  • impaired water
  • osmosis membrane

  • atomic layer
  • heavy metals
  • salt solution
  • highly crosslinked
  • traditional osmosis

  • commercial interfacial
  • pure water
  • film thickness
  • sea surface
  • makes extremely

  • thickness makes
  • maintaining adequate
  • process attractive
  • automated spin
  • low solute


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