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Polymers
Special Issues
Polymers for Membrane Separation: Fabrication and Applications
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Polymers for Membrane Separation: Fabrication and Applications

A special issue of Polymers (ISSN 2073-4360). This special issue belongs to the section "Polymer Membranes and Films".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 August 2023) | Viewed by 3267

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Chi Jiang

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
State Key Laboratory of Heavy Oil Processing, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, China University of Petroleum, Qingdao, China
Interests: membrane separation; thin-film composite membranes; interfacial polymerization; membrane fabrication; reverse osmosis; nanofiltration; molecular simulation
Dr. Bingbing Yuan

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Key Laboratory of Green Chemical Media and Reactions, Ministry of Education, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Collaborative Innovation Center of Henan Province for Green Manufacturing of Fine Chemicals, Henan Normal University, Xinxiang, China
Interests: molecular separations; membrane fabrication; membrane characterisation; membrane transport processes
Dr. Hu Ping

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Key Laboratory of Green Chemical Media and Reactions, Ministry of Education, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Collaborative Innovation Center of Henan Province for Green Manufacturing of Fine Chemicals, Henan Normal University, Xinxiang, China
Interests: polyamide composite membranes; polymeric mixed matrix membranes; membrane preparation and characterization; molecular/ion sieving
Dr. Zhe Zhai

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Yantai University, Yantai, China
Interests: membrane separation; interfacial polymerization; nanofiltration; polymer film

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Today, membrane technology is popular in a wide range of separation applications due to its advantageous characteristics such as efficiency, high stability, and ease of operation. It has been used successfully in a number of applications, especially water treatment (drinking water and wastewater treatment), gas separation, and renewable energy storage-transformation processes, thus playing a key role in addressing the problems associated with water resources, the environment, and energy. Despite the widespread application of membrane technology, membrane performance must be improved, e.g., in terms of permeability, selectivity, fouling resistance, and chemical and thermal stability, in order to meet the growing demands for more sustainable industrial processes.

The basis of most membrane processes is membranes made from polymers or polymer composites. Advanced polymeric membranes are always a hot topic of great interest among researchers involved in polymer chemistry, engineering, and applications. Hence, this peer-reviewed Special Issue aims to highlight and promote recent advancements in polymeric membrane technology. We invite the submission of articles and reviews concerning the fabrication, application, theory, and characterization of polymeric membranes. Topics of particular interest include but are not limited to the following:

  • Polymeric membranes and polymeric mixed-matrix membranes;
  • Membrane preparation and characterization;
  • New understanding of membrane formation;
  • Transport mechanisms of membrane process;
  • Membrane applications in water treatment, gas separation, molecular separation, energy, biomedical devices, and other sustainable processes;
  • The modeling and simulation of membrane processes;
  • Operation and module design.

Dr. Chi Jiang
Dr. Bingbing Yuan
Dr. Hu Ping
Dr. Zhe Zhai
Guest Editors

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. Polymers is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly 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 2700 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

  • polymeric membranes
  • mixed-matrix membranes
  • membrane preparation and characterization
  • membrane formation
  • transport mechanisms
  • membrane applications
  • simulation of membrane processes
  • module design
  • water treatment
  • gas separation
  • energy

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

13 pages, 8338 KiB  
Article
Thin-Film Composite Membrane with Porous Interlayer Composed of Dendritic Mesoporous Silica Nanoparticles for Enhanced Nanofiltration
by Chi Jiang, Mengmeng Zhang and Yingfei Hou
Polymers 2023, 15(19), 3912; https://doi.org/10.3390/polym15193912 - 28 Sep 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 790
Abstract
Positively charged nanofiltration (NF) membranes show great potential in the fields of water treatment and resource recovery. However, this kind of NF membrane usually suffers from relatively low water permeance. Herein, a positively charged NF membrane with a porous interlayer is developed, where [...] Read more.
Positively charged nanofiltration (NF) membranes show great potential in the fields of water treatment and resource recovery. However, this kind of NF membrane usually suffers from relatively low water permeance. Herein, a positively charged NF membrane with a porous interlayer is developed, where the interlayer is formed by assembling dendritic mesoporous silica nanoparticles (DMSNs) after the formation of a polyamide layer. This post-assembly strategy avoids the adverse effect of the interlayer on the formation of positively charged NF membranes. The porous DMSN interlayer provides abundant connected channels for water transport, thus endowing the NF membrane with enhanced water permeance. A series of DMSNs with different sizes was synthesized, and their influence on membrane formation and membrane performance was systematically investigated. The optimized membrane exhibits a CaCl2 rejection rate of 95.2% and a water flux of 133.6 L·h−1·m−2, which is 1.6 times that of the control group without an interlayer. This work represents an approach to the fabrication of a positively charged NF membrane with porous interlayers for high-efficiency cation rejection. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Polymers for Membrane Separation: Fabrication and Applications)
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22 pages, 11187 KiB  
Article
The Influence of Physical Properties on the Membrane Morphology Formation during the Nonisothermal Thermally Induced Phase Separation Process
by Samira Ranjbarrad and Philip K. Chan
Polymers 2023, 15(16), 3475; https://doi.org/10.3390/polym15163475 - 19 Aug 2023
Viewed by 893
Abstract
The physical properties of a polymer solution that are composition- and/or temperature-dependent are among the most influential parameters to impact the dynamics and thermodynamics of the phase separation process and, as a result, the morphology formation. In this study, the impact of composition- [...] Read more.
The physical properties of a polymer solution that are composition- and/or temperature-dependent are among the most influential parameters to impact the dynamics and thermodynamics of the phase separation process and, as a result, the morphology formation. In this study, the impact of composition- and temperature-dependent density, heat capacity, and heat conductivity on the membrane structure formation during the thermally induced phase separation process of a high-viscosity polymer solution was investigated via coupling the Cahn–Hilliard equation for phase separation with the Fourier heat transfer equation. The variations of each physical property were also investigated in terms of different boundary conditions and initial solvent volume fractions. It was determined that the physical properties of the polymer solution have a noteworthy impact on the membrane morphology in terms of shorter phase separation time and droplet size. In addition, the influence of enthalpy of demixing in this case is critical because each physical property showed a nonhomogeneous pattern owing to the heat generation during phase separation, which in turn influenced the membrane morphology. Accordingly, it was determined that investigating spinodal decomposition without including heat transfer and the impact of physical properties on the morphology formation would lead to an inadequate understanding of the process, specifically in high-viscosity polymer solutions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Polymers for Membrane Separation: Fabrication and Applications)
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13 pages, 3255 KiB  
Article
The Use of Polymer Membranes for the Recovery of Copper, Zinc and Nickel from Model Solutions and Jewellery Waste
by Elżbieta Radzymińska-Lenarcik, Ilona Pyszka and Włodzimierz Urbaniak
Polymers 2023, 15(5), 1149; https://doi.org/10.3390/polym15051149 - 24 Feb 2023
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1180
Abstract
A polymeric inclusion membrane (PIM) consisting of matrix CTA (cellulose triacetate), ONPPE (o-nitrophenyl pentyl ether) and phosphonium salts (Cyphos 101, Cyphos 104) was used for separation of Cu(II), Zn(II) and Ni(II) ions. Optimum conditions for metal separation were determined, i.e., the optimal concentration [...] Read more.
A polymeric inclusion membrane (PIM) consisting of matrix CTA (cellulose triacetate), ONPPE (o-nitrophenyl pentyl ether) and phosphonium salts (Cyphos 101, Cyphos 104) was used for separation of Cu(II), Zn(II) and Ni(II) ions. Optimum conditions for metal separation were determined, i.e., the optimal concentration of phosphonium salts in the membrane, as well as the optimal concentration of chloride ions in the feeding phase. On the basis of analytical determinations, the values of parameters characterizing transport were calculated. The tested membranes most effectively transported Cu(II) and Zn(II) ions. The highest recovery coefficients (RF) were found for PIMs with Cyphos IL 101. For Cu(II) and Zn(II), they are 92% and 51%, respectively. Ni(II) ions practically remain in the feed phase because they do not form anionic complexes with chloride ions. The obtained results suggest that there is a possibility of using these membranes for separation of Cu(II) over Zn(II) and Ni(II) from acidic chloride solutions. The PIM with Cyphos IL 101 can be used to recover copper and zinc from jewellery waste. The PIMs were characterized by AFM and SEM microscopy. The calculated values of the diffusion coefficient indicate that the boundary stage of the process is the diffusion of the complex salt of the metal ion with the carrier through the membrane. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Polymers for Membrane Separation: Fabrication and Applications)
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11 pages, 3316 KiB  
Article
High-Performance Polyamide Reverse Osmosis Membrane Containing Flexible Aliphatic Ring for Water Purification
by Chi Jiang, Zhaohui Fei and Yingfei Hou
Polymers 2023, 15(4), 944; https://doi.org/10.3390/polym15040944 - 14 Feb 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2060
Abstract
A reverse osmosis (RO) membrane with a high water permeance and salt rejection is needed to reduce the energy requirement for desalination and water treatment. However, improving water permeance while maintaining a high rejection of the polyamide RO membrane remains a great challenge. [...] Read more.
A reverse osmosis (RO) membrane with a high water permeance and salt rejection is needed to reduce the energy requirement for desalination and water treatment. However, improving water permeance while maintaining a high rejection of the polyamide RO membrane remains a great challenge. Herein, we report a rigid–flexible coupling strategy to prepare a high-performance RO membrane through introducing monoamine with a flexible aliphatic ring (i.e., piperidine (PPR)) into the interfacial polymerization (IP) system of trimesoyl chloride (TMC) and m-phenylenediamine (MPD). The resulted polyamide film consists of a robust aromatic skeleton and soft aliphatic-ring side chain, where the aliphatic ring optimizes the microstructure of polyamide network at a molecular level. The obtained membranes thereby showed an enhanced water permeance of up to 2.96 L·m−2 h−1 bar−1, nearly a 3-fold enhancement compared to the control group, meanwhile exhibiting an ultrahigh rejection toward NaCl (99.4%), thus successfully overcoming the permeability–selectivity trade-off limit. Furthermore, the mechanism of the enhanced performance was investigated by molecular simulation. Our work provides a simple way to fabricate advanced RO membranes with outstanding performance. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Polymers for Membrane Separation: Fabrication and Applications)
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