Anti-biofouling membranes based on inkjet printed vertical graphene for sustainable water treatment

The rapid global urbanization and industrialization and the increasing population have been generating huge amounts of municipal and industrial wastewater, which raises the risk for substantial water pollution.

It is highly desired that if the wastewater can be converted in an energy-efficient, eco-friendly and sustainable manner to clean water for domestic and industrial applications.

Reverse osmosis membrane is a cutting-edge technology for this purpose, but is now suffering from the critical problem of membrane biofouling.

In this project, we will combine the sustainable and generic antimicrobial material (vertical graphene) with a versatile fabrication technique (inkjet printing) to develop anti-biofouling coatings on reverse osmosis membranes to convert them as sustainable anti-biofouling membranes.

This project is based on the interdisciplinary collaboration between process researchers in the printed electronics group at KTH and biomaterial researchers at Uppsala University.

Systematic experimental characterizations and computer simulations will be conducted to obtain the fundamental knowledge about the mechanism of vertical alignment during printing process, to enable the development of a more effective printing of large-area vertical graphene coatings on commercial reverse osmosis membranes.

The bio-fouling resistance and membrane efficiency will be verified through systematic tests under various environments.