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

authored by

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.

Organisation(s)

Institute of Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry

External Organisation(s)

South China University of Technology

Type

Article

Journal

Nature Sustainability

Volume

3

Pages

296-302

No. of pages

7

Publication date

04.2020

Publication status

Published

Peer reviewed

Yes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Global and Planetary Change, Food Science, Geography, Planning and Development, Ecology, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment, Urban Studies, Nature and Landscape Conservation, Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 7 - Affordable and Clean Energy

Electronic version(s)

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-020-0474-0 (Access: Closed)