Simultaneous rational design of ion separation membranes and processes

Deniz Rall, Artur M. Schweidtmann, Benedikt M. Aumeier, Johannes Kamp, Jannik Karwe, Katrin Ostendorf, Alexander Mitsos, Matthias Wessling*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

26 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Economically viable water treatment process plants for drinking water purification are a prerequisite for sustainable supply of safe drinking water in the future. However, modern membrane process development experiences a disconnect in this domain: the synthesis of the membrane and the design of the process are decoupled. We propose an optimization strategy to simultaneously design the performance of layer-by-layer nanofiltration membrane modules along with the separation process. This approach achieves overall optimal performance by extending the search space and thus exploiting synergies. Better separation performances at a lower cost as compared to conventional optimization strategies can be achieved. The key feature of this optimization framework is the integration of artificial neural networks. This machine-learning technique describes the membrane performance as a function of its synthesis protocol. We optimize the design problem rigorously by a deterministic global nonlinear optimization method. Thus, this framework yields membrane synthesis protocols and membrane processes that are optimally tailored to the desired separation task. In a showcase, the simultaneous membrane synthesis and process optimization design achieve immediately favorable results with lower impurities at comparable costs. The process investment and operation costs are compared to a state of the art commercially available membrane for nanofiltration.

Original languageEnglish
Article number117860
Number of pages11
JournalJournal of Membrane Science
Volume600
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2020
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Artificial neural network
  • Deterministic global optimization
  • Hybrid modeling
  • Layer-by-layer
  • Nanofiltration

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