Engineering Nanostructured Selective Layers for Reverse Osmosis Membranes

A major challenge to communities across the world in the next century will be ensuring millions have access to adequate freshwater resources. Studies from the UN World Health Organization indicate that over 1.1 billion people currently lack access to reliable and secure freshwater supplies, with an estimated 2.5 million deaths per year from diseases associated with poor access and sanitation in 2007. Reverse osmosis (RO), a process through which water is desalted via pressurized flow past a salt-selective membrane, is an energy-efficient method to generate freshwater from oceanic, brackish, and waste water sources. However, there are a number of challenges to scaling up RO processes to large scale production, including the need to improve membrane selectivity and throughput.