Ionopure: Commercializing Charged Mosaic Membranes for Residential Water Purification

Student: Nadia (Correa) Nejjar, 2015-2016

There is a critical need to address the ever growing demand for clean water and energy in a sustainable manner. The charged mosaic membrane technology effectively replicates the process of biological membranes by transporting chemicals into and out of cells with nearly flawless selectivity. Unfortunately these membranes are currently not commercialized because of the complications involved with fabricating them on a mass scale. The Phillip group believes they have discovered a successful and time efficient method of rapidly producing these membranes using electrohydrodynamic printing to precisely control the deposit of solutions containing functional molecules. More research into the membrane market needs to be conducted as well as discovering any novel applications where traditional membrane technologies would be deficient in. If commercialized successfully, the charged mosaic membrane technology will be the first of its kind that specifically targets ions based on its chemical makeup rather than pore size and could revolutionize traditional filtration and separations processes.