In desalination, new materials filter specific ions rather than all ions without filtering.An international team has recently developed a new material that efficiently filters salt in seawater and separates seawater from metal ions, and is expected to It is of great economic value to increase the efficiency of seawater desalination and metal recovery.
A team of researchers from Australia, the United States and China reported in a new issue of Science in the World that they made a metal-organic framework that mimics the filtration of biological cell membranes and efficiently Filter salt in sea water and remove metal ions in seawater.
Metal-organic framework material is a new type of porous material that has been very popular in recent years. It has great application value in catalysis, energy storage and separation.
Researchers believe that the reverse osmosis membrane technology used in many desalination plants and water treatment plants in the world consumes relatively high energy. In contrast, new materials can filter specific ions instead of filtering all ions without separate filtering. Method is more economical and energy saving.
In addition, the technology is also expected to be used to recover valuable metals. One potential application is the extraction of lithium metal. Lithium is widely used in energy and high-end manufacturing industries. Lithium-ion batteries are used in most portable electronic devices, which makes some countries consider lithium as a scarcity strategy. Resources, there is an increasing demand for the market to obtain or recover lithium from waste water.
One of the research collaborators, Professor Wang Huan-Ting of Monash University, Australia, said that seawater is rich in lithium ions, and this membrane material can selectively filter out lithium ions, which is currently a mining industry that is inefficient in extracting lithium from rocks and brines. With reference.Study team will continue to study how to develop products that can be applied.
