Inorganic porous hollow fibers for intensified fractionation and filtration

• Applicant: Professor Dr.-Ing. Matthias Wessling
• Subject Area: Chemical and Thermal Process Engineering ; Glass, Ceramics and Derived Composites
• Term: from 2013 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 225799829

• Final Report Year: 2018

Final Report Abstract

The project covered a broad range of relevant questions related to the use and scaleup of heatable inorganic porous hollow fibers. On the fundamental level we investigated how temperature-driven fluid instabilities can effect shear stress and shear stress to diminish concentration polarization and fouling. The effect of temperature on particle interactions and interactions between particles and a membrane wall was systematically studied assessing the individual contribution to the XDLVO potential (including of Van der Waals, electric double layer, Lewis acid base forces) and Brownian motion. The gained knowledge on the temperature dependence of particle interactions and fluid instabilities can be very relevant for filtration studies. On an application-oriented level we applied electrically heated fibers in various applications, focussing both on fundamental working principle as on practical results. We synthesised responsive membranes by immobilizing responsive microgels onto the hollow fibers. Varying the microgel chemistry, we achieve tunable charge retention. Composite heateable hollow fibers have been tested in a newly developed small-scale temperature swing adsorption process. The transnational cooperation resulted in frequent interactions between project partners from both academia and industry and yielded a large output in terms of publications, conference presentations and posters. All participants were very positive about the collaborative atmosphere of this project; facilitated by the size (not too large/small) and composition (whole knowledge chain, international) of the consortium.

Publications

• Funky inorganic fibers, Dissertation at the University of Twente (06/2017)
  P. de Wit
  
• Tunable permeation: Heatable ceramic membranes with thermos-responsive microgel coating, Journal of Membrane Science, 539 (2017), p 451-457
  T. Lohaus, P. de Wit, M. Kather, D. Menne, N. Benes, A. Pich, M. Wessling
  (See online at https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mem-sci.2017.05.052)
• Flow patterns of combined Rayleigh-Bénard convection and membrane permeation, Journal of Membrane Science, 549 (2018), p 60-66
  T. Lohaus, N. Herkenhoff, R. Shankar, M. Wessling
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.memsci.2017.11.061)