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The objective is to develop functional polymers and additives for manufacturing membranes with reduced fouling and high selectivity, including polymers and processes that give isoporous membranes.
Membrane fouling is one of the major problems in aqueous membrane purification processes. It leads to a loss of membrane performance, makes time and cost intensive cleaning steps necessary, and shortens the membrane lifetime. Conventional polymer membranes have a wide distribution of pore sizes, with the oversized pores carrying a disproportionate amount of the flux, making them prone to fouling by particulate plugging. Research in this project is investigating several approaches to reduce membrane fouling, including the incorporation of additives selected or designed to reduce fouling, and the development of processes for making membranes with uniform pore sizes (isoporous membranes).
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