title: Investigating the Potential of Single-Walled Aluminosilicate Nanotubes in Water Desalination.
abstract: Water shortage has become a critical issue. To facilitate the large-scale deployment of reverse-osmosis water desalination to produce fresh water, discovering novel membranes is essential. Here, we computationally demonstrate the great potential of single-walled aluminosilicate nanotubes (AlSiNTs), materials that can be synthesized through scalable methods, in desalination. State-of-the-art molecular dynamics simulations were employed to investigate the desalination performance and structure-performance relationship of AlSiNTs. Free energy profiles, passage time distribution, and water density map were also analyzed to further understand the dependence of transport properties on diameter and water dynamics in the nanotubes. AlSiNTs with an inner diameter of 0.86 nm were found to fully reject NaCl ions while allowing orders of magnitude higher water fluxes compared to currently available reverse osmosis membranes, providing opportunities in water desalination.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical Engineering, National Taiwan University, No. 1, Sec. 4, Roosevelt Rd., Taipei, 10617, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Kai-Hsin
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0930-0005
authors.initials: KH
authors.lastname: Liou
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical Engineering, National Taiwan University, No. 1, Sec. 4, Roosevelt Rd., Taipei, 10617, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Dun-Yen
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2349-4432
authors.initials: DY
authors.lastname: Kang
authors.affiliation: William G. Lowrie Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, The Ohio State University, 151 W. Woodruff Ave., Columbus, OH, 43210, USA.
authors.forename: Li-Chiang
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2821-9501
authors.initials: LC
authors.lastname: Lin
keywords: membranes; molecular dynamics; nanotubes; reverse osmosis; water desalination