• Membrane Journal
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• v.30 no.5
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• pp.293-306
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• 2020

Increasing harmful effects of climate change, such as its effect on water scarcity, has led to a focus on developing effective water purification methods to obtain pure water. Additionally, rising levels of water pollution is increasing levels of environmental degradation, calling for sources of water treatment to remove contaminants. To purify water, osmotic processes across a semipermeable membrane can take place, and recent studies are showing that incorporating nanoparticles, including carbon quantum dots (CQDs), graphene carbon dots (GQDs), and graphene oxide quantum dots (GOQDs) are making thin film composite (TFC) membranes more effective by increasing water flux while maintaining similar levels of salt rejection, increasing the hydrophilicity of the membrane surface, showing bactericidal properties, exhibiting antifouling properties to prevent accumulation of bacteria or other microorganisms from reducing the effectiveness of the membrane, and more. In the review, the synthesis process, applications, functionality, properties, and the role of several types of quantum dots are discussed in the composite membrane for water purification.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.205-224
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• 2015

A novel hydrophilic poly (vinylidene fluoride)/poly (p-phenylene terephthalamide) (PVDF/PPTA) blend membrane was prepared by in situ polycondensation of p-phenylene diamine (PPD) and terephthaloyl chloride (TPC) in PVDF solution with subsequent nonsolvent induced phase separation (NIPS) process. For comparison, conventional solution blend membrane was prepared directly by adding PVDF powder into PPTA polycondensation solution. Blend membranes were characterized by means of viscometry, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (FESEM). The effects of different blending methods on membrane performance including water contact angle (WCA), mechanical strength, anti-fouling and anti-compression properties were investigated and compared. Stronger interactions between PVDF and PPTA in in situ blend membranes were verified by viscosity and XPS analysis. The incorporation of PPTA accelerated the demixing rate and caused the formation of a more porous structure in blend membranes. In situ blend membranes exhibited better hydrophilicity and higher tensile strength. The optimal values of WCA and tensile strength were $65^{\circ}$ and 34.1 MPa, which were reduced by 26.1% and increased by 26.3% compared with pure PVDF membrane. Additionally, antifouling properties of in situ blend membranes were greatly improved than pure PVDF membrane with an increasing of flux recovery ratio by 25%. Excellent anti-compression properties were obtained in in situ blend membranes with a stable pore morphology. The correlations among membrane formation mechanism, structure and performance were also discussed.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.149-157
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• 2023

Covalent organic frameworks (COFs) have shown promise in various applications, including molecular separation, dye separation, gas separation, filtration, and desalination. Integrating COFs into membranes enhances permeability, selectivity, and stability, improving separation processes. Combining COFs with single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) creates nanocomposite membranes with high permeability and stability, ideal for dye separation. Incorporating COFs into polyamide (PA) membranes improves permeability and selectivity through a synthetic interfacial strategy. Three-dimensional COF fillers in mixed-matrix membranes (MMMs) enhance CO₂/CH₄ separation, making them suitable for biogas upgrading. All-nanoporous composite (ANC) membranes, which combine COFs and metal-organic framework (MOF) membranes, overcome permeance-selectivity trade-offs, significantly improving gas permeance. Computational simulations using hypothetical COFs (hypoCOFs) demonstrate superior CO₂ selectivity and working capacity relevant for CO₂ separation and H₂ purification. COFs integrated into thin-film composite (TFC) and polysulfonamide (PSA) membranes enhance rejection performance for organic contaminants, salt contaminants, and heavy metal ions, improving separation capabilities. TpPa-SO₃H/PAN covalent organic framework membranes (COFMs) exhibited superior desalination performance compared to traditional polyamide membranes by utilizing charged groups to enable efficient desalination through electrostatic repulsion, suggesting their potential for ionic and molecular separations. These findings highlight COFs' potential in membrane technology for enhanced separation processes by improving permeability, selectivity, and stability. In this review, COF applied for the separation process is discussed.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.370-374
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• 2009

A double-layer optical sensing membrane has been fabricated to measure the concentration of dissolved oxygen (DO) and pH value simultaneously. (tris(4,7-diphenyl-1,10-phenanthroline (Rudpp) ruthenium(II)) as a DO sensitive dye has been mixed in the methyl trimethoxy silane (MTMS) sol-gel solution and coated onto one well in a 24-well microtiter plate. On the DO-sensing layer the GA (3-glycidoxypropyl trimethoxy silane (GPTMS), 3-aminopropyl trimethoxy silane (APTMS)) sol-gel solution mixed with 8-hydroxypyrene-1,3,6-trisulfonic acid trisodium salt (HPTS) has been coated and used to measure pH values. The double-layer sensing membrane was affected by ionic strength and temperature. The double-layer sensing membrane for DO and pH has been applied to online monitor in microorganism cultivation processes and showed a good performance.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.469-476
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• 2017

Membrane separation is a technology of low energy consumption. Membranes made of zeolites are of great interest because their fixed and open pores in the size of small molecules inside crystalline structures allow separation processes under harsh conditions. While zeolite NaA (LTA-type) is industrially used for dewatering of organic solvents, its pore size and thermal and hydrothermal stability can be tuned by exchange of framework and extra-framework elements. SOD with pores of only 0.28 nm is of great interest for $H_2$- und $H_2O$-separation and also can be tuned by ion exchange. Zeolites open the opportunity to create membranes of adapted separation behavior for small molecules in conditions of surrounding technical processes.

• Clean Technology
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.341-346
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• 2012

Many researchers have studied that many processes to effectively remove heavy metals in water/wastewater. Especially, among many processes, physical and chemical processes are relatively simple and obtain high treatment efficiency for removal heavy metals compared with biological treatment. Recently, interests in physical and chemical methods are sharply increasing again because of dangerousness for radioactive element. In this study, various physical and chemical processes such as chemical precipitation, ion-exchange, electrodialysis, and membrane separation are introduced.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.393-408
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• 2013

Gas separation processes using polymeric membranes have been greatly developed during the last few decades due to high energy efficiency and economic advantages. To achieve optimum economic performance, gas separation membranes required high permeability and selectivity. So, a number of reports examining the various polymeric materials for gas separation membranes have been published. Among the studied materials, polyimide (PI), which exhibit high permselectivity for various gas pairs, high chemical resistance, thermal stability, and mechanical strength, have attracted much attention. This paper focuses on the basic principle of gas separation, preparation procedure of membrane along with the recent developments and research trends of PI based materials for gas separation.

• Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.159-163
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• 2018

The feasibility of applying coagulation-integrated microfiltration (MF) as a pretreatment for an ultrafiltration (UF) feed in oily wastewater treatment was investigated. The effects of different coagulants on oil removal rates from wastewater were studied. The maximum oil removal rate of 82% was obtained after coagulation with 130 mg/L of polyaluminium chloride (PAC). UF flux reached $95L/(m^2{\cdot}h)$ with coagulation-integrated MF as pretreatment. This value was 2.5 times higher than that flux obtained without pretreatment. The value of UF flux increased as the transmembrane pressure (TMP) and cross-flow velocity (CFV) of the UF module increased. UF flux gradually increased when TMP and CFV exceeded 0.4 MPa and 3 m/s, respectively, because of concentration polarization and membrane fouling stabilization. Chemical oxygen demand reduction and oil removal rate reached 95.2% and 98.5%, respectively, during integrated membrane processing with a PAC concentration of 130 mg/L, TMP of 0.4 MPa, and CFV of 3 m/s for UF. In addition, sequentially cleaning the fouling membrane with NaOH and $HNO_3$ aqueous solutions caused UF flux to recover to 90%. These encouraging results suggested that the hybrid integrated membrane process-based coagulation and MF + UF are effective approaches for oily wastewater treatment.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.297-311
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• 2016

Modeling and simulation of air humidification by hollow fiber membrane contactors are investigated in the current study. A computational fluid dynamic model was developed by solving the k-epsilon turbulence 2D Navier-Stokes equations as well as mass conservation equations for steady-state conditions in membrane contactors. Finite element method is used for the study of the air humidification under different operating conditions, with a focus on the humidity density, total mass transfer flux and velocity field. There has been good agreement between simulation results and experimental data obtained from literature. It is found that the enhancement of air stream decreases the outlet humidity from 0.392 to 0.340 (module 1) and from 0.467 to 0.337 (module 2). The results also indicated that there has been an increase in air velocity in the narrow space of shell side compared with air velocity wide space of shell side. Also, irregular arrangement has lower dead zones than regular arrangement which leads to higher water flux.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers
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• v.18 no.7
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• pp.1738-1750
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• 1994

Both cylindrical cup drawing and square cup drawing are analyzed using membrane analysis as well as shell analysis by the elastic-plastic finite element method. An incremental formulation incorporating the effect of large deformation and normal anisotropy is used for the analysis of elastic-plastic non-steady deformation. The computed results are compared with the existing experimental results to show the validity of the analysis. Comparisons are made in the punch load and distribution of thickness strain between the membrane analysis and the shell analysis for both cylindrical and square cup drawing processes. In punch load, both analyses show very little difference and also show generally good agreement with the experiment. For the cylindrical cup deep drawing, the computed thickness strain of a membrane analysis, however, shows a wide difference with the experiment. In the shell analysis, the thickness strain shows good agrement with the experiment. For the square cup deep drawing, both membrane and shell analyses show a wide difference with experiment, this may be attributable to the ignorance of the shear deformation. Concludingly, it has been shown that the membrane approach shows a limitation for the deep drawing process in which the effect of bending is not negligible and more exact information on the thickness strain distribution is required.