Fluorine-functionalized nanoporous graphene as an effective membrane for water desalination

Abstract

Most water in the world is as saline water in seas and oceans. Desalination technology is a promising method to solve the global water crisis. Recently, many attentions have been paid to the graphene-based membranes in water desalination due to their low production cost and high efficiency. In this paper, molecular dynamics simulations are employed to investigate the effect of functionalized graphene nanosheet (GNS) membranes on the performance of salt separation from seawater in terms of water permeability and salt rejection. For this purpose, the hydrogenated (–H) and fluorinated (–F) pores were created on the GNS membrane. Then, the functionalized graphene membrane was placed in the middle of the simulation box in an aqueous ionic solution containing Na+ and Cl− ions. The applied pressure (in the range of 10–100 MPa) was used as the driving force for transport of water molecules across the reverse osmosis (RO) graphene-based membrane in order to obtain the water permeability and salt rejection. Also, radial distribution functions (RDFs) of ion–water and water–water as well as the water density map around the membrane were obtained. The results indicated that the hydrophilic chemical functions such as fluorine (–F) can improve the water permeability at low pressures.