CAREER: Reimagining distillation for next-generation water treatment

Reliable access to water is crucial to the health and economic prosperity of the nation. However, water scarcity in some regions is creating a need for new methods to produce clean water from a variety of sources including wastewater and seawater. This project will investigate an innovative distillation process for water purification that can produce safe, high-quality water using less energy than other conventional processes use. The key innovation in the project is to use pressure instead of heat to distill water, which has the potential to reduce energy use by a factor of ten. Pressure-driven distillation will require a new class of water treatment membranes that can remove salt and contaminants from challenging water sources. The research team will build on its preliminary results to develop high-performance membranes suitable for pressure-driven distillation. The deployment of innovative water systems will require a skilled workforce. The project team will conduct project-based learning modules on water scarcity for high school students and will involve undergraduate students in the research. Overall, the project will foster both the technological innovation and skilled workforce needed to secure a sustainable water future. Addressing water scarcity requires efficiently treating impaired water sources, such as wastewater and saline water, to remove nearly all dissolved constituents. The goal of this CAREER project is to reinvent distillation as an efficient, pressure-driven process for advanced water treatment. Conventional distillation processes are driven by heat and have poor energy efficiency in water treatment. The central hypothesis of this work is that membranes with tailored surface structures and an ultrathin air layer will facilitate pressure-driven distillation in a more efficient, selective, and robust way than conventional processes. The objectives of the project are to (1) explore distillation membranes that resist wetting under applied pressure, (2) evaluate the maximum water permeability for distillation membranes, and (3) conduct application-relevant testing with high performance composite membranes. These goals will be carried out using advanced material fabrication methods, experimental performance characterization, and new modeling techniques. The project will contribute to the scientific foundation for a new class of water treatment membranes that produce higher-quality water with less energy than conventional systems. The project will also develop fundamental knowledge on wetting physics and evaporation phenomena. Education and outreach efforts will support the training of the next generation of water engineers by developing hands-on water treatment modules for high schools in communities impacted by water scarcity. A mentorship program will engage undergraduate students in advanced water treatment research. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.