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Atomistic Understanding of Zeolite Nanosheets for Water Desalination
journal contribution
posted on 2017-03-17, 00:00 authored by Seyed
Hossein Jamali, Thijs J. H. Vlugt, Li-Chiang LinReverse osmosis constitutes
a large portion of currently operating
commercial water desalination systems. Employing membranes with large
water fluxes while maintaining high salt rejection is of central importance
in decreasing the associated energy consumption and costs. The ultrathin-film
nature of zeolite nanosheets and their versatile pore structures provides
great opportunities in desalination. To push forward the development
of zeolite nanosheets for water desalination, nonequilibrium molecular
dynamics simulations were carried out to systematically study zeolites
as RO membranes and establish fundamental structure-performance relationships.
We have identified that zeolite nanosheets can achieve a high salt
rejection rate close to 100% while allowing nearly 2 orders of magnitude
higher water permeability than currently available membranes. Moreover,
the effects of the pore density, inclusion of cages, and free energy
barrier on water permeability and salt rejection are unraveled, leading
to important insights toward the rational design of novel zeolite
membranes.