Bio-mimetic Membranes for Water Purification and Wastewater Treatment

Abstract

Reverse osmosis (RO)-based desalination and wastewater reclamation are gaining increasing popularity driven by water shortages and population growth. Advances in membrane technology in the past few decades have resulted in great savings in energy consumption of RO processes. Further reduction in energy consumption calls for novel membranes with significantly enhanced water permeability compared to the current state of the art thin-film composite polyamides. An attractive option is to learn from nature’s high efficiently water filtration systems that involve a group of specialised water transport proteins – aquaporins. This chapter presents the recent development of aquaporin-based biomimetic membranes, a topic that received a great interest in the membrane community in recent years.