NANO-/MICRO-STRUCTURED MEMBRANE ENABLED WATER AND ENERGY SUSTAINABILITY

Abstract

Environmental sustainability covers a wide range of issues starting from a specific location to a global one. Energy and water issues are two essential elements of a sustainable society. The research objectives in this dissertation are to reduce the energy consumption during water desalination to broader the application of such water treatment techniques and also reduce the energy consumption for the cooling and heating system. The energy-efficient water desalination can be achieved by tuning the interlayer spacing of graphene oxide (GO) laminates and shortening the water pathway through the filtration membrane. Compared to the previous research, as-designed reverse osmosis (RO) membranes can provide a stable high ion-rejection rate ascribed to the fixed interlayer spacing and a high ion-permeation rate because of a short water-flowing pathway. In addition, the energy-saving cooling and heating system was achieved by the environmentally-adaptive membrane (EAM), consisting of delicately microstructures made from the thermal-sensitive polymer. In this dissertation, my research focuses on three topics: • Fullerene tailored graphene oxide interlayer spacing for water sustainability • Scalable gradient graphene oxide nanostructure for water sustainability • Environmentally-adaptive self-cooling and heating membrane for energy sustainability All three topics developed in the dissertation are to realize the energy efficiency for social sustainability through nano-/micro-structured membrane enabled technologies.