High Flux, Fouling Resistant Membranes for Pretreatment of RO

Contract number N00014-10-C-0224 is a joint project between Clean Membranes and PoroGen. The project objective is to develop low-maintenance, high-flux, low-fouling water filtration modules for reverse osmosis RO pre-treatment in order to improve the desalination process onboard ships. Membrane modules developed in this project promise to exhibit improved flux and fouling resistance. This in turn will lead to more compact and efficient filtration systems that reduce maintenance and downtime, costs and energy requirements. Activities in the third quarter of the project included 1. screening candidate epoxy resins to cast tube sheets into pilot sized modules, 2. building equipment to set up and form pilot size fiber bundles, 3. initial preparation of composite PANPAN-g-PEEK membranes, and 4. additional work on PAN fiber spinning in parallel with PANPAN-g-PEO fiber spinning. Summary of results The major milestone accomplished in the third 3 quarter of the project was the verification that the commercial grade polymer materials PAN and PAN-g-PEO are compatible in solvent systems required for successful hollow fiber spinning and these formulations can be spun into target hollow fiber sizes. Future work includes - Optimizing membrane and spinning conditions of PAN-g-PEO into PAN membranes - Fouling and retention testing in cross-flow configuration - Module design and fabrication - Large-scale testing