CleanCELL aims at developing sustainable cellulose-based membrane structures and functional purification systems that can selectively capture, measure and even decompose water-borne contaminants from different matrices. These multimaterial architectures can be tailored to address controlled porosity, flux, rejection rates and mechanical performance required for specific applications, by different surface treatments and functionalization steps. The main goals are:
Fine-tune the structure of cellulosic membranes towards controlled porosity, flux, and rejection rates while simultaneously assuring required mechanical performance
Develop the membranes with required properties to enable large-scale production and roll-to-roll processing

Main results
We have demonstrated that we can control the variation of membrane porosity and thus permeation
Membranes can operate at pressures up to 6 bar
Proposed fabrication protocol enables large-scale production

Publications
Zhang, S., Reyes, G.A., Khakalo, A., Rojas, O.J. (2024). Hollow Filaments from Coaxial Dry–Jet Wet Spinning of a Cellulose Solution in an Ionic Liquid: Wet-Strength and Water Interactions. Biomacromolecules 25 (1), 282–289. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.biomac.3c00984
Vlasova, M., Nanocellulose based membranes for water treatment, Masters Thesis, Aalto University, 2023.