The ultra-thin film was developed by researchers from the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College, UK in cooperation with BP.
Researchers at the Livingston Group have published new insights into membrane technology. Pave the way for future research and industrial applications.
An ultra-thin polyamide nanofilter, also known as a membrane, is a very thin filter consisting of a polyamide film and its supporting layer.
Nanoscale filters are an important part of the water purification process, such as desalination, filtering impurities and making clean drinking water. Although they have been used in industry for decades, few have studied their properties and functions. The Livingston Group of the Polytechnic Institute recently published an article on Advanced Materials, focusing on this issue.
Improve industrial desalination process
A new study funded by BP International Advanced Materials Center (BP-ICAM) (funded $100 million) is studying the basic science of membranes to improve the efficiency of the desalination process in coastal areas. Reduce energy use in oil extraction, thereby increasing efficiency throughout the process.
Typically, the oil and gas industry uses nanofilters to remove salt from seawater on offshore drilling platforms, so low salinity water can be pumped into the reservoir to extract oil reserves. Related studies have shown that low salt is used compared to brine. The seawater can increase production, so the oil and gas industry is also turning to improve the desalination process.
Dale Williams, senior process engineer at BP, explained: 'For our upstream business, we need to use a lot of water to ensure the production of oil and natural gas. The water used is usually seawater, so we must process the seawater before we can inject it. In the well. If you remove most of the salt from the solution, you can wash away more oil from the rock surface.
Sheetal Handa, BP's deputy director of BP-ICAM, added: 'This membrane gives us the opportunity to access seawater and get the low salinity water we need, not only to recover more oil, but also to maximize our operational efficiency. But the premise is that we must really understand the basic composition and working principle of the polyamide membrane. At present, the BP-ICAM research taught by the Livingston Group is aimed at this problem and timely transmit the information to BP.