Browsing by Author "Xu, Jiarui"

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    Ultrathin and Tunable Graphene Oxide Membranes for Pressure Driven Water Filtration
    (2016-04-26) Xu, Jiarui; Li, Qilin
    The emerging 2D material, graphene oxide (GO), provides an ideal substitute to overcome many major issues of water treatment membranes. The performance of GO membranes can be adjusted by controlling the interlayer spacing, but manipulating the interlayer spacing in subnanometer range and applying GO membranes to pressure driven filtration application remain big issues. Here, asultrathin GO membranes (50 nm) were fabricated, and diamines were used as crosslinker to control the interlayer distance and prevent GO expansion in water. XRD confirms that crosslinked GO (cGO) membrane has smaller interlayer spacing expansion (from 7.83 Å to 10.6 Å), compared with non-crosslinked GO membrane (from 7.20 Å to 13.3 Å). The water permeance of all cGO membranes are about 60% of non-crosslinked GO membranes. cGO membranes have the same low rejection for monovalent ions (Na+ and Cl-) but more than double rejection for divalent ions (Mg2+ and SO42-), which suggests that size exclusion is the predominant mechanism for salt rejection. These demonstrates that the crosslinkers successfully adjust the interlayer distance of GO membranes in subnanometer range and alleviate GO expansion in water.
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    Use of surface modified porous membranes for fluid distillation
    (2022-05-17) Li, Qilin; Wu, Jinjian; Halas, Nancy C.; Zodrow, Katherine R.; Guo, Haoli; Xu, Jiarui; Yu, Cong; Rice University; William Marsh Rice University; United States Patent and Trademark Office
    In some embodiments, the present disclosure pertains to systems and methods for distilling a fluid by exposing the fluid to a porous membrane that includes a surface capable of generating heat. In some embodiments, the heat generated at the surface propagates the distilling of the fluid by converting the fluid to a vapor that flows through the porous membrane and condenses to a distillate. In some embodiments, the surface capable of generating heat is associated with a photo-thermal composition that generates the heat at the surface by converting light energy from a light source to thermal energy. In some embodiments, the photo-thermal composition includes, without limitation, noble metals, semiconducting materials, dielectric materials, carbon-based materials, composite materials, nanocomposite materials, nanoparticles, hydrophilic materials, polymers, fibers, meshes, fiber meshes, hydrogels, hydrogel meshes, nanomaterials, and combinations thereof. Further embodiments pertain to methods of making the porous membranes of the present disclosure.
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    Use of surface modified porous membranes for fluid distillation
    (2020-11-24) Li, Qilin; Wu, Jinjian; Halas, Nancy J.; Zodrow, Katherine R.; Guo, Haoli; Xu, Jiarui; Yu, Cong; Rice University; United States Patent and Trademark Office
    In some embodiments, the present disclosure pertains to systems and methods for distilling a fluid by exposing the fluid to a porous membrane that includes a surface capable of generating heat. In some embodiments, the heat generated at the surface propagates the distilling of the fluid by converting the fluid to a vapor that flows through the porous membrane and condenses to a distillate. In some embodiments, the surface capable of generating heat is associated with a photo-thermal composition that generates the heat at the surface by converting light energy from a light source to thermal energy. In some embodiments, the photo-thermal composition includes, without limitation, noble metals, semiconducting materials, dielectric materials, carbon-based materials, composite materials, nanocomposite materials, nanoparticles, hydrophilic materials, polymers, fibers, meshes, fiber meshes, hydrogels, hydrogel meshes, nanomaterials, and combinations thereof. Further embodiments pertain to methods of making the porous membranes of the present disclosure.