Effective ion sieving with Ti₃C₂T _x MXene membranes for production of drinking water from seawater

verfasst von

Li Ding, Libo Li, Yanchang Liu, Yi Wu, Zong Lu, Junjie Deng, Yanying Wei, Jürgen Caro, Haihui Wang

Abstract

Traditional ways of producing drinking water from groundwater, water recycling and water conservation are not sufficient. Seawater desalination would close the gap but the main technology used is thermally driven multi-flash distillation, which is energy consuming and not sustainable. Stacking two-dimensional (2D) nanomaterials into lamellar membranes is a promising technique in the pursuit of both high selectivity and permeance in water desalination. However, 2D membranes tend to swell in water, and increasing their stability in aqueous solution is still challenging. Here, we report non-swelling, MXene membranes prepared by the intercalation of Al³⁺ ions. Swelling is prevented by strong interactions between Al³⁺ and oxygen functional groups terminating at the MXene surface. These membranes show excellent non-swelling stability in aqueous solutions up to 400 h and possess high rejection of NaCl (~89.5–99.6%) with fast water fluxes (~1.1–8.5 l m⁻² h⁻¹). Such membranes can be easily fabricated by simple filtration and ion-intercalating methods, which holds promise for their scalability.

Organisationseinheit(en)

Institut für Physikalische Chemie und Elektrochemie

Externe Organisation(en)

South China University of Technology

Typ

Artikel

Journal

Nature Sustainability

Band

3

Seiten

296-302

Anzahl der Seiten

7

Publikationsdatum

04.2020

Publikationsstatus

Veröffentlicht

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Globaler Wandel, Lebensmittelwissenschaften, Geografie, Planung und Entwicklung, Ökologie, Erneuerbare Energien, Nachhaltigkeit und Umwelt, Urban studies, Natur- und Landschaftsschutz, Management, Monitoring, Politik und Recht

Ziele für nachhaltige Entwicklung

SDG 7 – Erschwingliche und saubere Energie

Elektronische Version(en)

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-020-0474-0 (Zugang: Geschlossen)