Rotating carbon nanotube membrane filter for water desalination

Qingsong Tu; Qiang Yang; Hualin Wang; Shaofan Li

doi:10.1038/srep26183

Rotating carbon nanotube membrane filter for water desalination

Sci Rep. 2016 May 18:6:26183. doi: 10.1038/srep26183.

Authors

Qingsong Tu¹, Qiang Yang^{1

2}, Hualin Wang², Shaofan Li¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA.
² State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory for Environmental Risk Assessment and Control on Chemical Process, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai, China.

Abstract

We have designed a porous nanofluidic desalination device, a rotating carbon nanotube membrane filter (RCNT-MF), for the reverse osmosis desalination that can turn salt water into fresh water. The concept as well as design strategy of RCNT-MF is modeled, and demonstrated by using molecular dynamics simulation. It has been shown that the RCNT-MF device may significantly improve desalination efficiency by combining the centrifugal force propelled reverse osmosis process and the porous CNT-based fine scale selective separation technology.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't