The purpose of the project is to investigate the possibilities to incorporate aquaporin molecules in different types of nanotechnological membranes. The water membrane technology will be implemented in three applications 1) A water purification application, 2) An energy producing application (salinity gradient energy using osmotic pressure) and 3) an application for industrial wastewater reclamation and reuse.
The overall flow chart of the project is therefore as displayed below. Additional activities besides the main tasks shown in the grey block arrows are simulations and laboratory testing. Simulation of the aquaporin molecules in the nanotechnological membrane material is an important method to optimise the design of such new membrane material, i.e. link the boxes in the figure above. Also measuring techniques (microscopy) and laboratory testing for various physical, biological and chemical properties are important ingredients in the project.
The project is not following a “waterfall” model, where the beginning of a new component marks the end of the preceding component. A large degree of iteration is envisaged. For instance testing of membrane material in a membrane system may reveal that the material is sensitive to specific physical constraints prevailing in such membrane systems, and therefore the material has to be reinforced, for instance by new design of the nano-structure. This close feedback effect between all components is the reason why there is a relatively big time overlap between the defined work packages: Membrane engineering experts will be involved early in the project, and aquaporin producers will be involved in the later stages of the project.
The project contains multi-disciplinary tasks within different research areas including molecular biology, computer simulation, membrane physics, biotechnological engineering, and engineering. The project management ensures close liaison and knowledge management across the multi-disciplinary groups throughout the study period.
The MEMBAQ project is broken down into 5 work packages following the logical phases of the project, plus a project management work package, see Figure 7‑3. The timing is shown in the vertical axis to the right in the figure. The entire duration is 3 years. The two tasks, production of aquaporin and computer simulation, respectively, can be initiated as two parallel activities. However, remaining tasks have a significant time overlap as depicted in the figure. It requires high degree of interaction between the research groups, and an active participative role of the project management besides from pure administrative activities. This is further described in chapter 6.
Work package leaders are indicated in the organisation chart below. The co-ordinating partner (WP6) is DHI Water & Environment.
The consortium is organised as described in the figure below. The three main entities within the project structure are the Steering Committee, the Technical Committee and the Work package leaders.
- Organisation chart of the project.