Photothermal Membrane Distillation for Seawater Desalination

Antonio Politano; Pietro Argurio; Gianluca Di Profio; Vanna Sanna; Anna Cupolillo; Sudip Chakraborty; Hassan A Arafat; Efrem Curcio

doi:10.1002/adma.201603504

Photothermal Membrane Distillation for Seawater Desalination

Adv Mater. 2017 Jan;29(2). doi: 10.1002/adma.201603504. Epub 2016 Nov 7.

Authors

Antonio Politano¹, Pietro Argurio², Gianluca Di Profio³, Vanna Sanna⁴, Anna Cupolillo¹, Sudip Chakraborty⁵, Hassan A Arafat⁵, Efrem Curcio^{2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physics, University of Calabria, Via P. Bucci cubo 31/C, 87036, Rende, (CS), Italy.
² Department of Environmental and Chemical Engineering DIATIC, University of Calabria, Via P. Bucci cubo 45A, 87036, Rende, (CS), Italy.
³ Institute on Membrane Technology, National Research Council of Italy (ITM-CNR), Via P. Bucci cubo 17C, 87036, Rende, (CS), Italy.
⁴ Department of Chemistry and Pharmacy, Laboratory of Nanomedicine, University of Sassari, 07100, Sassari, Italy.
⁵ Institute Center for Water and Environment (iWater), Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, PO Box 54224, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

PMID: 28066987
DOI: 10.1002/adma.201603504

Abstract

Thermoplasmonic effects notably improve the efficiency of vacuum membrane distillation, an economically sustainable tool for high-quality seawater desalination. Poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) membranes filled with spherical silver nanoparticles are used, whose size is tuned for the aim. With the addition of plasmonic nanoparticles in the membrane, the transmembrane flux increases by 11 times, and, moreover, the temperature at the membrane interface is higher than bulk temperature.

Keywords: membrane distillation; seawater desalination; surface plasmon resonances.