Guest Seminar by Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering - High-performance Membranes: From Conceptual Design to Membrane Preparation and Applications
Separation often accounts for 40-60% of energy consumption and 60-80% of capital cost in many chemical processes. Hence, reducing the energy for separation is probably the most efficient and meaningful approach to reaching carbon neutrality. The membrane process is one of the most energy-efficient separation technologies that can save up to 90% of separation energy compared to conventional distillation methods, as demonstrated in seawater desalination. However, most membrane applications suffer from low membrane performance that needs innovative ideas from material design to fabrication methods.
In this talk, I will start to elucidate the importance of membrane performance from the conceptual design approach. Then, I will share our work in preparing high-performance membranes out of ordered porous materials and ideas on creating ordered porous structures in amorphous materials such as polymers. Lastly, I will share a couple of industrially important applications of membranes in separating olefin/paraffin, seawater desalination, wastewater treatment, and lithium extraction from seawater.
Dr. Zhiping Lai is a professor in the Chemistry and Chemical Engineering program of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). He received his B.E. and M.S. from Tsinghua University, China, and his Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His research focuses on developing high-performance membranes from ordered porous materials and their applications in separating hydrocarbon mixtures, seawater desalination, lithium-sulfur batteries, and low-grade heat recovery. He was the SABIC presidential chair from 2013 to 2016 and the recipient of the 2020 AIChE Industrial Gases Award. He is recognized as one of the pioneers who opened the field of MOF membranes which has been one of the most active research directions in membrane research.