Effective ion sieving with Ti3C2Tx MXene membranes for production of drinking water from seawater

Li Ding, Libo Li, Yanchang Liu, Yi Wu, Zong Lu, Junjie Deng, Yanying Wei (), Jürgen Caro () and Haihui Wang ()
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Li Ding: South China University of Technology
Libo Li: South China University of Technology
Yanchang Liu: South China University of Technology
Yi Wu: South China University of Technology
Zong Lu: South China University of Technology
Junjie Deng: South China University of Technology
Yanying Wei: South China University of Technology
Jürgen Caro: Leibniz University of Hannover
Haihui Wang: South China University of Technology

Nature Sustainability, 2020, vol. 3, issue 4, 296-302

Abstract: Abstract Traditional ways of producing drinking water from groundwater, water recycling and water conservation are not sufficient. Seawater desalination would close the gap but the main technology used is thermally driven multi-flash distillation, which is energy consuming and not sustainable. Stacking two-dimensional (2D) nanomaterials into lamellar membranes is a promising technique in the pursuit of both high selectivity and permeance in water desalination. However, 2D membranes tend to swell in water, and increasing their stability in aqueous solution is still challenging. Here, we report non-swelling, MXene membranes prepared by the intercalation of Al3+ ions. Swelling is prevented by strong interactions between Al3+ and oxygen functional groups terminating at the MXene surface. These membranes show excellent non-swelling stability in aqueous solutions up to 400 h and possess high rejection of NaCl (~89.5–99.6%) with fast water fluxes (~1.1–8.5 l m−2 h−1). Such membranes can be easily fabricated by simple filtration and ion-intercalating methods, which holds promise for their scalability.

Date: 2020
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DOI: 10.1038/s41893-020-0474-0

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