The Donnan Membrane Principle: Opportunities for Sustainable Engineered Processes and Materials

摘要

To address the emerging global challenges of rising energy demands and diminishing water supply, many ongoing research thrusts attempt to explore innovative technologies and processes. An in-depth analysis would promptly reveal that many of these innovations essentially embrace and apply scientific and engineering fundamentals that have long existed. The new approaches are, however, increasingly pertinent due to population growth, steady degradation in the quality of water resources, global warming, dwindling supply of fossil fuels, and disparity in the distribution of wealth around the world, among other issues facing our planet (1, 2). Bioenergy, biocatalysis, osmosis, photosynthetic reactions, thermodynamic heat cycles, etc., constitute the foundation of many of these emerging processes and new materials (3-8).