Cellulose Acetate RO Membrane: A Great Way to Purify Your Water at Home

I’ve been messing around with some new stuff lately, trying to make a decent water filter at home. You know, those reverse osmosis membranes? I decided to try my hand at making one using cellulose acetate.

First, I gathered all my materials. Cellulose acetate, that’s the main thing. It’s used in a lot of stuff, even clothes, because it’s cheap and tough. I also got some chitosan, which is supposed to help with preventing all the gunk from building up on the membrane.

Next, I started experimenting with mixing this stuff up. I used this method called phase-inversion. It sounds fancy, but it’s basically just mixing the cellulose acetate and chitosan with some other chemicals and then letting it sit to form a membrane. I had to play around with the ratios a bit to get it right, it’s not like baking a cake!

After a few tries, I finally got a membrane that looked pretty good. It was thin and looked like it could actually filter some water. I set up a simple rig to test it out. Basically, I attached the membrane to a tube and ran some dirty water through it, collecting the water that came out the other side.

• First Try: The water was still pretty murky.
• Second Try: Better, but still not great. There were still some tiny particles in there.
• Third Try: This time, I tweaked the membrane mixture a bit more, and bam! The water came out crystal clear.

I was pretty stoked! It actually worked. This little homemade membrane was filtering out all the nasty stuff from the water. Of course, I ran some tests to make sure it was really getting rid of bacteria and other microbes. It’s important to make sure the water is actually safe to drink, you know?

It turns out these cellulose acetate membranes are pretty durable and they can even handle chlorine, which is good for keeping the membrane clean. I also found out that they’re used in some industrial applications, like for desalinating water and even for generating energy. Who knew?

This whole experiment got me thinking. It’s pretty cool that you can make something like this at home, and it’s a good reminder of how important clean water is. Plus, it was a fun little project to tinker with. It’s not perfect, but it’s a good start. Maybe I’ll keep messing around with it and see if I can make it even better. You never know what you might be able to do with a little bit of science and some elbow grease.