Webinar title: Membranes for Sustainable Pollution Mitigation: a snapshot of research and applications in Wen Zhang's group at NJIT
Speaker: Professor Wen Zhang
Webinar time: 14:00 pm, June 12, 2023 (Monday)
Venue: Room 231, New Environmental Building, Tencent Meeting ID 879-483-901
Inviter: Professor Bo Zhang
Abstract:
Membrane separation techniques have found wide applications in diverse fields such as energy, water, pharmaceutical and chemical industries owing to their compelling advantage of high throughput, mature production lines for membranes and other accessories, modulated assembly and deployment. However, their inherent disadvantages such as (bio)fouling, concentration polarization and membrane aging limit applications of membrane-based processes. Numerous attempts have been made to design and prepare novel membrane types, surfaces, and modules with antifouling features such as tuning surface geometries, morphologies and/or other properties to improve permeation and overcome these inherent limitations. Integration of chemical reactivity and catalysis into conventional membrane filtration leads to smart and innovative membrane separation systems with chemically or catalytically active properties that effectively suppress the limitations of inherent conventional membrane filtration systems such as pollutant rejection or degradation, and membrane fouling. Reactive membrane systems usually include photocatalytic membranes, electrochemical membranes, and other hybridized forms such as Fenton or Fenton-like membrane processes. Other innovative membranes such as piezoelectrical membranes 11 and sonochemical membranes are also emerging and show promise in reducing membrane fouling, but they have the dual effect of mechanical vibration and chemical oxidation in membrane fouling mitigation or pollutant degradation. This talk will provide an overview of reactive membrane development and applications. Particularly, Dr. Zhang will focus on three major reactive membrane systems (i.e., photocatalytically reactive membranes, microwave-enabled reactive membrane, and electrochemically reactive membranes) that have been studied and evaluated in his laboratory. Moreover, he will demonstrate the industrial partnerships with membrane manufacturers such as Sterlitech and provide insights into the future strategies to foster academia-industry collaborations.
About the speaker:
Wen Zhang is a professor of Newark College of Engineering in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at New Jersey Institute of Technology. Wen is a licensed Professional Engineer (P.E.) registered in the States of New Jersey and Delaware. He is an American Academy of Environmental Engineers and Scientists (AAEES) Board Certified Environmental Engineer (BCEE). Dr. Zhang's research focuses on colloidal interfaces and processes that are crucial for environmental and chemical engineering applications. His expertise includes environmental behavior and interfacial processes for nanomaterials, microplastics and soft particles such as microbes and bubbles, reactive membrane filtration systems for desalination and emerging contaminant removal, microalgal removal and harvesting processing using magnetophoretic separation and membrane filtration processes. His latest research also expands from agricultural applications of nanobubbles to lithium/cobalt recovery from spent lithium-ion batteries. More details are available at Zhang’s website: www.wenresearch.com.