INFLUENCE OF POLYMER BACKBONE RIGIDITY ON WATER AND SALT TRANSPORT PROPERTIES OF LOW WATER CONTENT MEMBRANE POLYMERS FOR DESALINATION

摘要

Providing sustainable supplies of purified water and energy is a critical global challenge for the future, and polymer membranes will play a key role in addressing these clear and pressing global needs for water and energy. Polymer membrane-based processes dominate the desalination market because they are more energy efficient than thermal desalination processes, and polymer membranes are crucial components in several rapidly developing power generation and storage applications that rely on membranes to control rates of water and/or ion transport. Much remains unknown about the influence of polymer structure on even basic intrinsic water and ion transport properties, and these relationships must be developed to design next generation polymer membrane materials. For desalination applications, polymers with simultaneously high water permeability and low salt permeability are desirable in order to prepare selective membranes that can efficiently desalinate water, and a tradeoff relationship between water/salt selectivity and water permeability provides a benchmarking tool for evaluating the intrinsic water and salt transport properties of membrane polymers.