Biomimetic Artificial Water Nano-Channels-Polyamide Membranes for desalination – BIOWATER

Clean water is ubiquitous from drinking to agriculture and from energy supply to industrial manufacturing. Since the conventional water sources are becoming increasingly rare, the development of new technologies for water supply is crucial to address the world’s clean water needs. Desalination is in many regards the most promising approach to long-term water supply since it potentially delivers an unlimited source of fresh water. Seawater desalination using reverse osmosis (RO) membranes has become over the past decade a standard approach to produce fresh water. While this technology has proven to be efficient, it remains however relatively costly in terms of energy input due to the use of high-pressure pumps resulting of the low water permeation through polymeric polyamide (PA) RO membranes. Recently, water channels incorporated in lipidic membranes were demonstrated to provide a selective water translocation that enables to break permeability-selectivity trade-off. biomimetic Artificial Water channels (AWCs) are becoming highly attractive systems to achieve a selective transport of water. Recently pioneer work in this field with the fabrication of the first AWC@PA composite membrane with outstanding desalination performance was carried out. However, the microscopic desalination mechanism in play is still unknown and its understanding represents the shortest way for a long-term conception and design of AWC@PA composite membranes with better performance. BIOWATER aims to gain an unprecedented fundamental understanding of the nanostructuration of the AWC@PA membranes and of the microscopic mechanism at the origin of their water transport and ion rejection performance. This ground-breaking project will rely on interwoven activities in fabrication of AWC@PA membranes, cutting-edge experimental characterization of their desalination performance and advanced multiscale modelling.