This project will develop reverse osmosis membranes that will reduce the energy consumption of reverse osmosis by up to 50%, reducing the total cost of water from brackish and seawater desalination, and wastewater reuse, by up to 40%. Energy production depends on water. In particular, the production of electricity in the U.S. consumes 140 billion gallons of water daily, mainly through evaporative cooling in thermoelectric generating stations. As fresh water becomes more scarce and unreliable in the U.S. and around the world, alternative water supplies are utilized and reverse osmosis desalination is often needed to purify the water to the required quality. Hence, the cost, energy intensity and carbon footprint of electricity generation becomes dependent upon the cost and energy intensity of desalination. In this DOE SBIR Phase I proposal, we propose to develop a reverse osmosis membrane having a two-fold permeability improvement over the present state-of-the-art, paving the way for further permeability improvement to an eventual ten-fold improvement and manufacturing scale-up in phases II and III.
