Emerging Investigators in Promoting Advanced Membrane Technologies

A special issue of Membranes (ISSN 2077-0375). This special issue belongs to the section "Membrane Applications".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 September 2021) | Viewed by 3286

Special Issue Editor

Department of Chemical Engineering, Brunel University London, Uxbridge UB8 3PN, UK
Interests: materials chemistry; separation engineering; reaction engineering; process engineering; porous materials; membrane technology
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In today’s energy, chemical, and pharmaceutical industries, around half of the energy consumption is directly a result of various separation processes employed to purify and produce highly pure products. Compared with tradition adsorption-based and thermal-driven distillation technologies, membrane technology is more advantageous in continuous operation, facile scalability, low energy cost, small footprint and highly concentrated gas/liquid separations. However, traditional polymeric membranes usually suffer from a trade-off between permeability (throughput) and selectivity (efficiency) described by the Robeson upper bound. Correspondingly, despite excellent thermal and chemical stability, inorganic membranes have intrinsic limitations such as weak mechanical strength and complicated fabrication procedures that make large-scale application exceedingly difficult. To further tackle these limitations of membranes in the separation and purification applications, new materials and membrane design for the challenging gas/liquid separation and waste purification applications are highly desired and indispensable.

This Special Issue on “Emerging Investigators in Promoting Advanced Membrane Technologies” of the journal Membranes seeks contributions from world-leading researchers to address new challenges in the field of utilizing metal–organic frameworks (MOFs), covalent organic frameworks (COFs), porous organic polymers (POPs), porous organic cages (POCs), etc. as pure membranes or mixed matrix membranes for all kinds of gas/liquid separation and waste purification applications. Topics include but are not limited to molecular design of MOFs/COFs/POCs/POPs for membrane preparation, hybrid membrane design, transport mechanism studies, module and membrane reactor design, membrane automation, new applications, and industrial commercialization. Authors are invited to submit their latest results; both original papers and reviews are welcome.

Dr. Zhigang Hu
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Membranes is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Metal–organic framework membrane
  • Covalent organic framework membrane
  • Porous organic polymer membrane
  • 2D inorganic/organic membrane
  • Ultra-thin films
  • Mixed-matrix membrane
  • Waste purification
  • Desalination
  • Gas separation

Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue

  • Ease of navigation: Grouping papers by topic helps scholars navigate broad scope journals more efficiently.
  • Greater discoverability: Special Issues support the reach and impact of scientific research. Articles in Special Issues are more discoverable and cited more frequently.
  • Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
  • External promotion: Articles in Special Issues are often promoted through the journal's social media, increasing their visibility.
  • e-Book format: Special Issues with more than 10 articles can be published as dedicated e-books, ensuring wide and rapid dissemination.

Further information on MDPI's Special Issue polices can be found here.

Published Papers (1 paper)

Order results
Result details
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

21 pages, 5774 KiB  
Article
Removal of 4-Nitrophenol from Aqueous Solution by Using Polyphenylsulfone-Based Blend Membranes: Characterization and Performance
by Ali Amer Yahya, Khalid T. Rashid, Maryam Y. Ghadhban, Noor Edin Mousa, Hasan Shaker Majdi, Issam K. Salih and Qusay F. Alsalhy
Membranes 2021, 11(3), 171; https://doi.org/10.3390/membranes11030171 - 27 Feb 2021
Cited by 54 | Viewed by 2938
Abstract
Among many contaminants in wastewater, organic phenol compounds presented a major concern to endanger the water resources safety. In the present study, blend nanofiltration (NF) membranes comprising polyphenylsulfone (PPSU) and polyethersulfone (PES) were prepared via the non-induced phase separation and their performance was [...] Read more.
Among many contaminants in wastewater, organic phenol compounds presented a major concern to endanger the water resources safety. In the present study, blend nanofiltration (NF) membranes comprising polyphenylsulfone (PPSU) and polyethersulfone (PES) were prepared via the non-induced phase separation and their performance was examined against 4-Nitrophenol (4-NP). The PES ratio in the dope solution was varied from 6 to 9 wt.% to probe the impact of PES on the retention and permeation characteristics of the final membranes. A series of experimental tools were employed to estimate the characteristics of the membranes, including surface and cross-section, hydrophilicity, pore size and pore size distribution. Performance evaluation of the NF membranes was conducted considering two operational variables; pH and initial feed solution. About 99% removal of 4-NP along with 6.2 L/m2·h·bar was achieved at the optimum operating conditions as revealed by optimization and mathematical modelling. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Emerging Investigators in Promoting Advanced Membrane Technologies)
Show Figures

Figure 1

Back to TopTop