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Membranes: A Variety of Energy Landscapes for Many Transfer Opportunities
Version 1
: Received: 22 January 2018 / Approved: 23 January 2018 / Online: 23 January 2018 (06:43:31 CET)
A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.
Bacchin, P. Membranes: A Variety of Energy Landscapes for Many Transfer Opportunities. Membranes 2018, 8, 10. Bacchin, P. Membranes: A Variety of Energy Landscapes for Many Transfer Opportunities. Membranes 2018, 8, 10.
Abstract
A membrane can be represented by an energy landscape that solutes or colloids must cross. A model accounting for the momentum and the mass balances on the membrane energy landscape establishes a new way of writing for the Darcy law. The counter pressure in the Darcy law is no longer written as the result of an osmotic pressure difference but rather as a function of colloid-membrane interactions. The ability of the model to describe the physics of the filtration is discussed in detail. This model is solved on a simplified energy landscape to derive analytical relationships that describe the selectivity and the counter pressure from ab-initio operating conditions. The model shows that the stiffness of the energy landscape has an impact on the process efficiency: a gradual increase in interactions (like with hourglass pore shape) can reduce the separation energetic cost. It allows the introduction of a new paradigm to increase membrane efficiency: the accumulation that is inherent to the separation must be distributed across the membrane. Asymmetric interactions thus lead to direction-dependent transfer properties and the membrane exhibits diode behavior. These new transfer opportunities are discussed.
Keywords
membrane transport; osmosis; interaction
Subject
Physical Sciences, Chemical Physics
Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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