Quantifying the potential of ultra-permeable membranes for water desalination
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Grossman_Quantifying the potential.pdf
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Author(s)
Cohen-Tanugi, David
Dave, Shreya H.
Lienhard, John H.
Grossman, Jeffrey C.
McGovern, Ronan Killian
Date Issued
February 2014
Journal
Energy & Environmental Science
Publisher
Royal Society of Chemistry
Citation
Cohen-Tanugi, David, Ronan K. McGovern, Shreya H. Dave, John H. Lienhard, and Jeffrey C. Grossman. “Quantifying the Potential of Ultra-Permeable Membranes for Water Desalination.” Energy & Environmental Science 7, no. 3 (2014): 1134. © The Royal Society of Chemistry
Version
Final published version
Abstract
In the face of growing water scarcity, it is critical to understand the potential of saltwater desalination as a long-term water supply option. Recent studies have highlighted the promise of new membrane materials that could desalinate water while exhibiting far greater permeability than conventional reverse osmosis (RO) membranes, but the question remains whether higher permeability can translate into significant reductions in the cost of desalinating water. Here, we address a critical question by evaluating the potential of such ultra-permeable membranes (UPMs) to improve the performance and cost of RO. By modeling the mass transport inside RO pressure vessels, we quantify how much a tripling in the water permeability of a membrane would reduce the energy consumption or the number of required pressure vessels for a given RO plant. We find that a tripling in permeability would allow for 44% fewer pressure vessels or 15% less energy for a seawater RO plant with a given capacity and recovery ratio. Moreover, a tripling in permeability would result in 63% fewer pressure vessels or 46% less energy for brackish water RO. However, we also find that the energy savings of UPMs exhibit a law of diminishing returns due to thermodynamics and concentration polarization at the membrane surface.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
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Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1039/c3ee43221a
