[미국] MIT 연구팀, 해수담수화에 적합한 고압 그라핀막 연구

미국 MIT공과대학의 연구진들은 한 장의 그래핀이 고압을 견딜 수 있어 고압 멤브레인 설계가보다 효과적인 담수화 공정을 가능하게 할 수 있다고 보고했다.

MIT 연구팀은 탄소 원자 초박형 격자를 포함하는 단일 시트의 그래핀은 매우 약한 것처럼 보일 수 있지만, 초저온 재료가 예외적으로 튼튼하고 최소 100바(bar)의 가해지는 압력 하에서 손상되지 않은 상태를 유지한다는 것을 발견했다.

MIT 연구팀은 이러한 고압을 견디는 모듈에 구멍이 뚫려있는 얇은 바탕지지 기판과 그라핀을 짝 지어주는 것을 발견했다. 모공이 작을수록 그라핀은 높은 압력 하에서 더욱 탄력적이다라는 것이다.

MIT의 기계공학과 부교수인 Rohit Karnik은 『Nano Letters 저널』에 게재된 MIT 연구팀의 연구결과가 “거친 그라핀 기반 멤브레인은 해수에서 염분을 효율적으로 제거하기 위해 고압 흐름을 견뎌야 하는데 이번에 연구한 그래핀은 담수화와 같은 응용 분야에서 막 설계에 대한 가이드 라인을 제공할 것”이라고 밝혔다.

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MIT studies high-pressure graphene membranes for more effective desalination

Engineers at MIT report that a single sheet of graphene can withstand high pressures, opening up opportunities for the design of high-pressure membranes to enable more effective desalination processes.

A single sheet of graphene, comprising an atom-thin lattice of carbon, may seem rather fragile, but the MIT team have found that the ultrathin material is exceptionally sturdy, remaining intact under applied pressures of at least 100 bars.

They found the key to withstanding such high pressures is pairing graphene with a thin underlying support substrate that is pocked with tiny holes, or pores. The smaller the pores, the more resilient the graphene is under high pressure.

Rohit Karnik, an associate professor in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, says the team’s results, reported in the journal Nano Letters, serve as a guideline for designing tough, graphene-based membranes, particularly for applications such as desalination, in which filtration membranes must withstand high-pressure flows to efficiently remove salt from seawater.

“We’re showing here that graphene has the potential to push the boundaries of high-pressure membrane separations,” Karnik says.
“If graphene-based membranes could be developed to do desalination at high pressure, then it opens up a lot of interesting possibilities for energy-efficient desalination at high salinities.”

High-pressure membranes
Today’s existing membranes desalinate water via reverse osmosis, a process by which pressure is applied to one side of a membrane containing saltwater, to push pure water across the membrane while salt and other molecules are prevented from filtering through.

Many commercial membranes desalinate water under applied pressures of about 50-80 bars, above which they tend to get compacted or otherwise suffer in performance. If membranes were able to withstand higher pressures, of 100 bars or greater, they would enable more effective desalination of seawater by recovering more fresh water.

High-pressure membranes might also be able to purify extremely salty water, such as the leftover brine from desalination that is typically too concentrated for membranes to push pure water through.

“Reverse osmosis is among the most efficient methods of desalination in terms of energy," says Karnik. "If membranes could operate at higher pressures, this would allow higher water recovery at high energy efficiency.”

Turning the pressure up
The MIT team carried out experiments to see how much pressure graphene could withstand.

The researchers grew sheets of graphene using chemical vapor deposition, then placed single layers of graphene on thin sheets of porous polycarbonate. Each sheet was designed with pores of a particular size, ranging from 30 nanometers to 3 microns in diameter.

To gauge graphene’s sturdiness, the researchers concentrated on what they termed 'micromembranes' ? the areas of graphene that were suspended over the underlying substrate’s pores.

The team placed the graphene-polycarbonate membranes in the middle of a chamber, into the top half of which they pumped argon gas. The researchers also measured the gas flow rate in the bottom half of the chamber, reasoning that any increase in the bottom half’s flow rate would indicate that parts of the graphene membrane had failed, or 'burst,' from the pressure created in the top half of the chamber.

They found that graphene placed over pores that were 200 nanometers wide, or smaller, withstood pressures of 100 bars ? nearly twice that of pressures commonly encountered in desalination. As the size of the underlying pores decreased, the number of micromembranes that remained intact increased.

Can it desalinate?
To see if the graphene could tolerate high pressures while selectively filtering out water from seawater the research group fabricated nanoporous graphene to serve as a very simple graphene filter. They used a technique they had previously developed to etch nanometer-sized pores in sheets of graphene and then exposed these sheets to increasing pressures.

In general, they found that wrinkles in the graphene influenced whether micromembranes burst or not, regardless of the pressure applied. Parts of the porous graphene that lay along wrinkles failed or burst, even at pressures as low as 30 bars, while those that were unwrinkled remained intact at pressures up to 100 bars. The smaller the underlying substrate’s pores, the more likely micromembranes in the porous graphene were to survive, even in wrinkled regions.

“As a whole, this study tells us single-layer graphene has the potential of withstanding extremely high pressures, and that 100 bars is not the limit ? it’s comfortable in a sense, as long as the pore sizes on which graphene sits are small enough,” Karnik reports.

“Our study provides guidelines on how to design graphene membranes and supports for different applications and ranges of pressures.”

[출처 = Desalination & Water Reuse / 2017년 4월 27일]