Improving membranes with 3-D printing

More efficient separation technologies, such as in the reverse osmosis process that makes seawater drinkable, could be the result of introducing 3-D printing into membrane manufacture, according to researchers from the University of Bath.

Although membranes may not immediately spring to mind as industrially important, the separation processes that they enable are estimated to account for 40 to 70% of all industry capital and operating costs.

Moreover, they are key to separation and purification of industrial gases, fine chemicals and as indicated above, fresh water: these processes account for some 15% of all energy used globally. Improving membrane efficiency could therefore have a very large effect on carbon emissions and the efficiency of energy usage.

Darrell Patterson and colleagues from the Department of Chemical Engineering at Bath looked at the possibilities of 3-D printing for making tailored membranes; although Patterson admits that currently, the costs are too high to produce large-scale quantities of membranes to compete with current methods, he was interested to see what the possibilities and challenges of technology might be.