Graphene/Inorganic Hollow Fibre Membranes for Water Treatment

Membrane-based filtration technologies are standard separation processes and are widely used in water treatment; however their performance is still severely limited by the membrane thickness. This project combines the cutting-edge technologies of membrane fabrication and the science of atomic layer materials, graphene, to realize high-performance graphene hollow fibre membranes for desalination of seawater and wastewater treatment. We will develop graphene membranes supported by metal hollow fibre substrates where the thickness of the graphene membrane layer will be less than 5 nm with controlled pore size from 0.3 to 20 nm. The graphene hollow fibre membrane will overwhelm other membranes with the same pore size by at least fifty times higher permeation flux. Furthermore, in this project we will assemble membrane modules of above graphene hollow fibre membranes and build a lab-scale demo plant to evaluate its feasibility in real applications. A set of methodologies and knowledge of preparing graphene hollow fibre membranes and membrane modules will be developed for the first time, making graphene in a real engineering application.