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Membranes
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Chitosan-Based Membranes and Films for Water Purification
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Chitosan-Based Membranes and Films for Water Purification

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

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 February 2023) | Viewed by 8743

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Angela Spoială

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Guest Editor
Department of Science and Engineering of Oxide Materials and Nanomaterials, Faculty of Applied Chemistry and Materials Science, University Politehnica of Bucharest, 011061 Bucharest, Romania
Interests: materials processing and design; nanocomposite membranes; electrospinning; water treatment and purification applications
Prof. Dr. Ovidiu Oprea

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
1. Faculty of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnologies, National University of Science and Technology Politehnica Bucharest, 1-7 Polizu St., 011061 Bucharest, Romania
2. Academy of Romanian Scientists, 3 Ilfov St., 050044 Bucharest, Romania
Interests: nanostructured photocatalysts; intelligent drug delivery systems; magnetic core-shell nanoparticles
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues, 

We are pleased to invite you to join this Special Issue with valuable research papers or critical reviews in the area of the membrane having applications in water purification. Due to the lack of clean/ safe water systems, the demand for developing innovative membranes for water purification has increased considerably. Therefore, the need to improve or develop innovations in the area of the membrane is needed; however, there are still researches to be done in the field of purification membranes. The development of membranes has shifted attention towards polymer biomaterials, especially chitosan; this is due to its biocompatibility, biodegradability and non-toxicity, and also, its antibacterial and antioxidant properties, motives for desiring it in water purification membranes. Due to its great properties, chitosan can be further applied in diverse fields such as medicine, food packaging, environmental protection, and more. 

This Special Issue aims to highlight and contribute with critical reviews and innovations in composite membranes and films, especially regarding the synthesis and characterizations of composite/ nanocomposite membranes with applications in water purifications. 

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but not limited to) the following topics:

  • composite/ nanocomposite membranes and films;
  • materials processing and design;
  • innovative membrane;
  • synthesis and characterization of composite membranes; 
  • water purification;  
  • removal and/or degradation of pollutants; 

We look forward to receiving your contributions. 

Dr. Angela Spoială
Prof. Dr. Ovidiu Oprea
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. 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 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

  • nanoparticles and nanocomposites
  • innovative nanocomposite membranes
  • chitosan-based membranes and films
  • water purification applications
  • edible films based on chitosan
  • chitosan-based membranes/ films for biomedicine and bioengineering.

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

25 pages, 4943 KiB  
Article
Ethanol Separation from an Ethanol–Water Solution Using Vacuum Membrane Distillation
by Abeer G. Nassif, Salah S. Ibrahim, Hasan Sh. Majdi and Qusay F. Alsalhy
Membranes 2022, 12(8), 807; https://doi.org/10.3390/membranes12080807 - 20 Aug 2022
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 3704
Abstract
The vacuum membrane distillation (VMD) process was applied to separate ethanol from a simulated ethanol–water solution using a commercial polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) membrane. The presence of ethanol in the ethanol–water solution with a 2 wt.% ethanol concentration at a temperature above 40 °C during [...] Read more.
The vacuum membrane distillation (VMD) process was applied to separate ethanol from a simulated ethanol–water solution using a commercial polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) membrane. The presence of ethanol in the ethanol–water solution with a 2 wt.% ethanol concentration at a temperature above 40 °C during the MD process may result in membrane failure due to an increase in the chance of the PTFE membrane wetting at high temperatures. Therefore, the operating temperature in this study was not higher than 35 °C, with an initial ethanol concentration up to 10 wt.%. This work focuses on optimizing the VMD operating parameters using the Taguchi technique based on an analysis of variance (ANOVA). It was found that the feed temperature was the most-affected parameter, leading to a significant increase in the permeation flux of the PTFE membrane. Our results also showed that the permeate flux was reported at about 24.145 kg/m2·h, with a separation factor of 8.6 of the permeate under the operating conditions of 2 wt.%, 30 °C, 60 mm Hg(abs), and 0.6 L/min feed (concentration, temperature, permeate vacuum pressure, and flow rate, respectively). The initial feed concentration, vacuum pressure, and feed flow rate have a lower impact on the permeation flux. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Chitosan-Based Membranes and Films for Water Purification)
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25 pages, 8879 KiB  
Article
Preparation and Characterization of Chitosan/TiO2 Composite Membranes as Adsorbent Materials for Water Purification
by Angela Spoială, Cornelia-Ioana Ilie, Georgiana Dolete, Alexa-Maria Croitoru, Vasile-Adrian Surdu, Roxana-Doina Trușcă, Ludmila Motelica, Ovidiu-Cristian Oprea, Denisa Ficai, Anton Ficai, Ecaterina Andronescu and Lia-Mara Dițu
Membranes 2022, 12(8), 804; https://doi.org/10.3390/membranes12080804 - 20 Aug 2022
Cited by 39 | Viewed by 4148
Abstract
As it is used in all aspects of human life, water has become more and more polluted. For the past few decades, researchers and scientists have focused on developing innovative composite adsorbent membranes for water purification. The purpose of this research was to [...] Read more.
As it is used in all aspects of human life, water has become more and more polluted. For the past few decades, researchers and scientists have focused on developing innovative composite adsorbent membranes for water purification. The purpose of this research was to synthesize a novel composite adsorbent membrane for the removal of toxic pollutants (namely heavy metals, antibiotics and microorganisms). The as-synthesized chitosan/TiO2 composite membranes were successfully prepared through a simple casting method. The TiO2 nanoparticle concentration from the composite membranes was kept low, at 1% and 5%, in order not to block the functional groups of chitosan, which are responsible for the adsorption of metal ions. Nevertheless, the concentration of TiO2 must be high enough to bestow good photocatalytic and antimicrobial activities. The synthesized composite membranes were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and swelling capacity. The antibacterial activity was determined against four strains, Escherichia coli, Citrobacter spp., Enterococcus faecalis and Staphylococcus aureus. For the Gram-negative strains, a reduction of more than 5 units log CFU/mL was obtained. The adsorption capacity for heavy metal ions was maximum for the chitosan/TiO2 1% composite membrane, the retention values being 297 mg/g for Pb2+ and 315 mg/g for Cd2+ ions. These values were higher for the chitosan/TiO2 1% than for chitosan/TiO2 5%, indicating that a high content of TiO2 can be one of the reasons for modest results reported previously in the literature. The photocatalytic degradation of a five-antibiotic mixture led to removal efficiencies of over 98% for tetracycline and meropenem, while for vancomycin and erythromycin the efficiencies were 86% and 88%, respectively. These values indicate that the chitosan/TiO2 composite membranes exhibit excellent photocatalytic activity under visible light irradiation. The obtained composite membranes can be used for complex water purification processes (removal of heavy metal ions, antibiotics and microorganisms). Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Chitosan-Based Membranes and Films for Water Purification)
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