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Published on: March 13, 2016
Water transport mechanisms during pressure-driven transport through polyamide nanogaps
Riley Vickers1, Timothy M Weigand1, Orlando Coronell1
1Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599-7431, USA.
None:
Molecular-scale simulations of pressure-driven transport through polyamide nanogaps (5-100 Å) were performed to investigate fundamental transport mechanisms. Results show that transport in nanogaps 10 Å is always subdiffusive, but superdiffusive transport was observed in nanogaps 20 Å. Near typical operating pressures for applications ( = 100 atm), only the 100 Å nanogap exhibited superdiffusive behavior. Since openings in common membrane materials are typically <20 Å, results indicate that subdiffusive to diffusive transport dominates for typical applications, such as reverse osmosis.
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