UT chemical engineering professor Benny Freeman is part of an international research team that has developed an improvement to the water desalinization process, making fresh water cheaper and more accessible. The group has developed a chlorine-tolerant filter that eliminates a major step in the filtrating process.
"There are more than a billion people around the world who live without access to clean water, and clean water can be very expensive," Freeman said. "This kind of technology can potentially reduce the cost of water."
The first step of the current filtration method involves chlorinating water to kill germs after the water has been desalinized. The water must then be dechlorinated before it can pass through the membrane, which removes large particles that cannot tolerate the chlorine.
The group has designed a disinfecting, chlorine-resistant polymer membrane filter, which eliminates the need for the dechlorination step. The filtering process is consequently more efficient and cost-effective, Freeman said.
"The membranes that are currently used are very good but not stable against common disinfectants like chlorine that kill bugs, so they don't last long when these disinfectants are used, even in small amounts," said James McGrath of Virginia Tech, with whom Freeman worked on the project.
"What we've done is made a material that has a long lifetime in the presence of these chemicals. Second, we can clean up oily water and take out arsenic," McGrath said.
A more efficent process could also help reduce carbon-dioxide emissions, because the current method of separating salt and water requires the burning of fossil fuels.
"Energy and water are inherently connected," Freeman said. "Generation of pure water requires energy to separate the salt from the water."
The energy used to separate the salt from the water is generated from the burning of fossil fuels, which leads to the generation of carbon dioxide, Freeman said. The development of the membranes reduces the carbon footprint required to produce pure water.
Freeman also worked with Ho Bum Park of the University of Ulsan in South Korea. It took more than three years for the team to develop the new technology, and the research will be published July 28 in the German Chemical Society's journal. Funding for the research was provided by the Office of Naval Research and the National Science Foundation.
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