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Rejection mechanisms for contaminants in polymeric reverse osmosis membranes

Despite the success of reverse osmosis (RO) for water purification, the molecular-level physico-chemical processes of contaminant rejection are not well understood. Here we carry out NEMD simulations on a model polyamide RO membrane to understand the mechanisms of transport and rejection of both ionic and neutral contaminants in water. We observe that the rejection changes non-monotonously with ion sizes. In particular, the rejection of urea, 2.4 A radius, is higher than ethanol, 2.6 A radius, and the rejections for organic solutes, 2.2-2.8 A radius, are lower than Na+, 1.4 A radius, or Cl-, 2.3 A radius. We show that this can be explained in terms of the solute accessible intermolecular volume in the membrane and the solute-water pair interaction energy. If the smallest open spaces in the membrane's molecular structure are all larger than the hydrated solute, then the solute-water pair interaction energy does not matter. However, when the open spaces in the polymeric structure are such that solutes have to shed at least one water molecule to pass through a portion of the membrane molecular structure, the pair interaction energy governs solute rejection. The high pair interaction energy for water molecules in the solvation shell for ions makes the water molecules difficult to shed, thus enhancing the rejection of ions. On the other hand, the organic solute-water interaction energies are governed by the water molecules that are hydrogen bonded to the solute. Urea molecules have more hydrogen-bonding sites than alcohol molecules, leading to a higher rejection of urea than occurs for ethanol, a molecule of similar size but with fewer hydrogen bonding sites. These findings underline the importance of the solute's solvation shell and solute-water-membrane chemistry in the context of reverse osmosis, thus providing new insights into solute transport and rejection in RO membranes.