Development of porous materials with tailored surface properties for water purification

Water pollution has become a global environmental issue. Water shortage became an important and urgent problem worldwide. Pollution sources include oil spill, discharge of industrial wastewater and other human activities. Oily waste water does not simply mix together but also contains oil-in-water emulsions which contains oil droplets in micrometer or even nanometer sizes. This is one the hardest kind of water that needs to be treated by common water purification methods. As technology advancement and growth in human population, the demand for clean water became increasingly high. Therefore, water recycling becomes a challenging mission. Recent years, membrane technology has been developed to tackle oil-in-water emulsions due to its continuous treatment and high efficiency. However, there are challenges of membrane technology in water purification need to be solved such as surfactant fouling and pore plugging as these factors may decrease the filtration efficiency and flux of the membrane. Membrane technology can be used to develop new applications for water treatment, specifically, for oil water separation. Graphene was discovered as a promising candidate for oil water separation due to its physical properties, low cost and high durability. In this report, various application will be investigated and graphene gel modified membranes will be used for oil-water emulsion separation.Bachelor of Engineering (Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering