SmartSpacer
Nanofiltration (NF) and reverse osmosis (RO) membranes are widely and increasingly used for water treatment process. The efficiency of NF and RO processes is however adversely affected by biofouling. Environmental stimuli can trigger self-cleaning mechanisms of natural surfaces. Consequently there is an increasing interest in developing smart or stimuli responsive polymers as coatings to prevent biofouling. However, external chemical/physical stimuli must be selectively applied to the smart polymers to induce the cleaning mechanism; this procedure limits their applicability at industrial scale. The idea of this Proof of Concepts is to develop smart polymeric surfaces that will be used in NF/RO feed spacers. This concept is expected to dramatically reduce the operating costs of NF and reverse osmosis RO processes.
The Project is funded by the European Research Council under Horizon 2020