Aqueous separation processes are increasingly used for water and wastewater treatment and for medical, industrial, and municipal applications such as dialysis, high-quality water preparation, ethanol concentration, and juice and aroma concentration. The use of reverse osmosis (RO), a pressure-driven aqueous separation processes, is limited by low productivities of existing membranes and the high energy consumption for maintaining operating pressures. The principal objective of this proposal is to develop advanced reverse osmosis membrane (ROM) technology for water and wastewater treatment. The overall hypothesis of the proposed study is that highly efficient solute-rejecting osmotic membranes can be developed by incorporating biological water-channel proteins (Aquaporins or AQPs) into synthetic polymers. The proposed research consists of two major research tasks. In the first task insertion of AqpZ into ABA polymers will be optimized in terms of permeability, selectivity, and stability. In the second task, templated flat AqpZ-ABA membranes will be synthesized and characterized. The project will advance knowledge of transport in hydrophobic nanopores which has great potential for efficient gas and liquid separations and will enhance understanding of protein insertion behavior and transport properties in self-assembled biomimetic supramolecular materials. It will also help develop procedures for 2D crystallization of proteins using templating polymers.
Successful development of this new ROM technology may have broad applications beyond water and wastewater treatment, including drug delivery systems, and gas and liquid separations systems in the chemical process industry. There is international collaboration on the project including graduate student education in Switzerland to learn advanced polymer synthesis. Undergraduate students will be involved in the project through the College Summer Research Opportunity program. An effort will be made to recruit minority high school students through the McWest program in Chicago. The PI is also involved with the McWest programs in Chicago lecturing high school students about career opportunities in engineering.
