“Membranes can be a leapfrog opportunity. Countries or communities without traditional water treatment systems may choose to go directly to the newest technology,” said Tarabara.

Membranes selectively remove contaminants from water through a method that is analogous to sand filtration, except that membranes can remove things that are much smaller including dissolved species such as salts and very small microorganisms such as viruses. Thus, membranes can also desalinate or remove salt from ocean water, making it potable. This can be of great benefit as approximately 97.5% of Earth’s water supply is in oceans.

Along with Thomas Voice, an MSU professor of civil and environmental engineering, and Professor Merlin Bruening of MSU Department of Chemistry, Tarabara has led the international partnership of environmental engineers and scientists from MSU and Duke University, and several research centers in France, Ukraine, and Turkey that will create new technologies for the project.

“As we run out of ready-to-use fresh water supplies, we need to think about how to reuse water. Membranes are cost efficient and reliable for this purpose. They ensure the quality of water meets requirements as there is no margin for error,” said Tarabara.

An International Team
The MSU-led consortium of researchers earned the prestigious $2.3 million Partnerships for International Research in Education (PIRE) grant. “PIRE is a National Science Foundation grant we were awarded—we are one of the first 12 teams to receive it. Our PIRE project is in the development of nanotechnology tools which we use to understand how membranes work and how to make them better,” he said.

The project encourages international collaboration by establishing links with research groups from abroad. “We bring in the best people from around the world to address a particular environmental problem. Our students travel abroad for weeks, months, and even longer stays are encouraged by the NSF. The mission is to develop global scientists and engineers to understand global problems,” said Tarabara.

“This is a big problem to solve and the PIRE project provides the necessary framework to solve big problems of international scope successfully. For this reason it is the best project I could imagine working on,” he said.

“MSU is a fantastic place to do water research. We have a depth and breadth of knowledge and my colleagues are experts in their fields,” he said. Michigan has 21 municipal membrane treatment plants, yet is less impacted by drinking water purification challenges
than most states. “Michigan is less impacted as we are surrounded by fresh water. We do have several membrane plants equipped with salt rejecting membranes for water softening but we don’t need to do large scale sea water desalination, which is expensive. But states in the west do suffer from lack of sufficient fresh water supply and need to desalinate sea water,” Tarabara said.

Technology Offers Opportunity
Development of robust membranes is a significant opportunity to enhance the quality of water and, ultimately, public health, for U.S. states and especially in developing countries. This project also internationalizes the experience of the students involved by enhancing the learning competencies that reflect the knowledge, attitudes and skills essential to living and working as global citizens when they graduate.

“One premise of our partnership is that students are powerful catalysts for research collaboration,” Tarabara said. “Our research is organized in international teams in which students from a foreign institution are teamed with students from a U.S. institution.” Several graduate students from MSU have been funded through this project since its inception.

When the grant expires, Tarabara said, the project will live on either through PIRE II, a follow-up project, or with industrial partnerships around the globe.