Grants and Contributions:

Grant or Award spanning more than one fiscal year (2017-2018 to 2018-2019).

While Canada has significant fresh water reserves (9% of the world's renewable freshwater), the fresh water isx000D
not always available where needed. There exists a huge need for reliable, affordable, and efficient waterx000D
purification devices to provide fresh water for everyday consumption, especially in remote areas. Desalinationx000D
is one of the most promising approaches to supply fresh water to deal with the rapidly growing global potablex000D
water demand. Therefore, the industry supporter (New Plateau Technologies) aims at developing low-cost,x000D
practical portable handheld water desalination devices. To do so, high-performance and inexpensive membranex000D
to filter salt needs to be developed first. However, the industry supporter does not have the technical orx000D
conceptual experience to undertake this task.x000D
Thus, the main goal of this six-month Engage project is to capitalize on the existing expertise of Dr. Sun's teamx000D
to synthesize three-dimensional (3D) graphene/metal oxide composite filtering membrane, to support Newx000D
Plateau Technologies into the fabrication of an efficient handheld water desalinator. Specifically, it includes thex000D
synthesis of 3D graphene-based membrane and its pore size modification, the fabrication of 3D graphene/metalx000D
oxide nanocomposite and optimization, and the test for the water filtration performance.