Bibliometric Analysis And Fabrication Of Graphene Based Membranes For Desalination And Energy Extraction

Increasing concern about environmental pollution and energy crises has resulted in an increase in renewable energy research and development technologies.Graphene is a two-dimensional one atom thick allotrope of carbon with excellent mechanical properties,large surface area and high electron mobility.Graphene-based membranes have unique nano channels with broad prospective applications in desalination,fuel cells and wastewater treatment.At present,the preparation of graphene-based membrane and its application in desalination and other areas have been studied by researchers in mainland and abroad,but there is no analytical report on the development trend,characteristics and future development direction of graphene-based membranes.The research contents of this thesis are as follows:The first part of this thesis is bibliometric analysis of seawater desalination and energy extraction.This part uses all the subject category journals in Scopus database to retrieve the related literatures reported from 2012 to 2020 and analyzes 542 publications based on 177 journals for desalination and 773 publications in 192 journals for energy generation analysis.Major contributor of these publications in both analysis is China,however,United States covered highest amount of citations in area of desalination but china covers highest citations in area of energy generation.Nearly 80% of author keywords in both analysis were used only once or twice showing the broken interest,great discontinuity and dispersion in this direction.This analysis provides a new perspective for the research trend of graphene-based membranes in the past eight years.Second part of this study is to prepare reduced graphene oxide using a green reduction technique,and to prepare a new type of ion exchange membrane GO-sPES2 by modifying PES(polyether sulfone)polymer.The results showed the rejection rates to some organic dyes is 100%,which is nearly 50 times higher than that of ordinary graphene-based membranes reported in literature and maintains good stability reaching up to one month.The Salt rejection performance of membrane reached nearly to 100%which is 3 times better than normal GO membrane reported.In addition,we also used this membrane to construct a saline fuel cell.The maximum power and current output from Saline fuel cell was 190 mW and 9.1 mA respectively with GO-SPES2 membrane,which reveals that the ionic conductivity boosted up by the addition of rGO to the SPES as compared to using SPES or PES alone.The power density obtained at room temperature from SFC with GO-SPES2 membrane was nearly 30 mW/cm~2 at 1.2mA/cm~2 which is twice higher than the SFC with sPES assembly which has a power density around 12 mW/cm~2 at-0.6 mA/cm~2.This study will provide theoretical basis and practical experience for the promotion of graphene membrane materials,which will lead researchers to establish future directions in further studies using graphene-based membranes for desalination and energy extraction.