A method for preparing a nanoporous membrane includes alternatively repeating, on the surface of a porous substrate, the laminating of a hydrophilic homopolymer and the laminating of an amphiphilic block or graft copolymer to provide a polymer multilayer film in which the alternative laminate of the hydrophilic homopolymer and the amphiphilic block or graft copolymer is formed. The polymer multilayer film is annealed to form a microphase separated polymeric membrane. The laminating of a hydrophilic homopolymer and the laminating of a supramolecular structure compound are alternatively repeated, on the surface of the polymeric membrane, to form the alternative laminate of the hydrophilic homopolymer and the supramolecular structure compound.

The present invention is related to a method for fabricating multilayer singlebore membranes (10) or multilayer multibore membranes (20) for ultrafiltration applications including the following method steps: (a) feeding at least a material of a substrate (12), at least one material of a functional layer (14, 15) and a bore fluid (36) to a spinneret (30) simultaneously; (b) forming said membranes (10, 20) as a tube-like string (54) in a one-step process in said spinneret (30); (c) thereby assigning a functionality to said functional layer (14, 15) applied on at least one surface (13, 17) of said substrate (12). The invention is also related to a spinneret (30) for fabricating multilayer singlebore membranes (10) or multilayer multibore membranes (20), using the inventive method, and to a system comprising such a spinneret (30).

Provided is a moisture permeable filter medium formed by laminating a hydrophobic layer having hydrophobicity and a hydrophilic layer having hydrophilicity together, in which one of the hydrophobic layer and the hydrophilic layer is composed of a PTFE porous film formed using PTFE, and the other of the hydrophobic layer and the hydrophilic layer is composed of an air permeable sheet to which air is permeable.

Provided is a blood processing filter comprising a container having two spouts serving as an inlet for a liquid to be processed and an outlet for the processed liquid, and a filtration medium contained in the container, the filtration medium comprising a filter material having different CWST values for one surface A and the other surface B.

The object of the present invention is to provide a porous membrane by which a useful component can be recovered while suppressing the clogging during filtration of a protein solution and from which only a small amount of an eluate is eluted even when an aqueous solution is filtered.

The present invention provides a porous membrane containing a hydrophobic polymer and a water-insoluble hydrophilic polymer, the porous membrane having a dense layer in the downstream portion of filtration in the membrane, having a gradient asymmetric structure in which the average pore diameter of fine pores increases from the downstream portion of filtration toward the upstream portion of filtration, and having a gradient index of the average pore diameter from the dense layer to the coarse layer of 0.5 to 12.0.

In this disclosure, a process of recycling acid, base and the salt reagents required in the Li recovery process is introduced. A membrane electrolysis cell which incorporates an oxygen depolarized cathode is implemented to generate the required chemicals onsite. The system can utilize a portion of the salar brine or other lithium-containing brine or solid waste to generate hydrochloric or sulfuric acid, sodium hydroxide and carbonate salts. Simultaneous generation of acid and base allows for taking advantage of both chemicals during the conventional Li recovery from brines and mineral rocks. The desalinated water can also be used for the washing steps on the recovery process or returned into the evaporation ponds. The method also can be used for the direct conversion of lithium salts to the high value LiOH product. The method does not produce any solid effluent which makes it easy-to-adopt for use in existing industrial Li recovery plants.

Provided herein are methods for making a freeze-cast material having a internal structure, the methods comprising steps of: determining the internal structure of the material, the internal structure having a plurality of pores, wherein: each of the plurality of pores has directionality; and the step of determining comprises: selecting a temperature gradient and a freezing front velocity to obtain the determined internal structure based on the selected temperature gradient and the selected freezing front velocity; directionally freezing a liquid formulation to form a frozen solid, the step of directionally freezing comprising: controlling the temperature gradient and the freezing front velocity to match the selected temperature gradient and the selected freezing front velocity during directionally freezing; wherein the liquid formulation comprises at least one solvent and at least one dispersed species; and subliming the at least one solvent out of the frozen solid to form the material.

A substrate surface may be modified with a polymer coating to render the surface suitable for plasma functionalization. The polymer coating is deposited onto the surface at ambient temperature to a thickness of less than 0.1 μm. The polymer coating includes poly(p-xylylene) or a derivative thereof, and is capable of penetrating into pores of a porous substrate while no substantially altering the porosity of the substrate. The coated substrate is selected from a material lacking a primary or secondary aliphatic hydrogen atom.

The present invention provides an intrinsically anti-microbial hollow fiber membrane for filtration of liquids. The membrane comprises a plurality of porous hollow bilayer membrane fibers wherein the liquid enters from outside of the fiber, passing through the porous membrane into the lumen of the fiber and coming out from the hollow ending of the fiber, wherein this configuration provides a liquid outside-in arrangement and retains the filtrate outside. It means that membrane of the invention has built in characteristics to act against microbes in order to provide the use with a safe liquid free from microbes. The outer side or outer wall of the hollow fibers may be configured to become hydrophobic whereas inner side or inner wall of the hollow fiber membrane may be configured to become hydrophilic to enhance the water permeability to a great extent. The hollow fiber membrane may be configured to give it an intrinsic anti-microbial capability. A device containing above said membrane has also been disclosed.

A process and system to control the final product quality in a system for separating olefins and paraffins in a membrane system. A small finishing membrane stage is added to an existing membrane system that takes a slip stream from the product, purifies it to a very high concentration of propylene and blends it back into the product stream.