Membrane separation is at the heart of technologies for the remediation and purification of water and fluids in general. Membranes are generally made of polymeric materials that achieve separation by steric or electrostatic effect. The underlying vision is therefore essentially that of molecular sieving, leading to paradigms such as the selectivity-permeability trade-off, which limit the efficiency of filtration processes.
In this lecture, we will show how fundamental results from nanofluidics and emerging phenomena enable us to envisage new solutions and technologies that go beyond conventional approaches.
