Separation processes

This theme focuses on classical gravity separation methods and their recent innovations, emphasizing the optimization of operational parameters and adaptation to finer particle recovery and hard rock mineral processing. This research area matters because gravity separation remains a cost-effective and environmentally friendly technique, yet faces challenges in fine particle separation and operational control, necessitating advances in equipment design and process understanding.

This theme explores reactive separation processes combining chemical reactions and separation in unified equipment such as reactive distillation columns, focusing on control strategies to manage inherent nonlinearities and operational constraints. Approaches in process integration aim to reduce energy consumption, equipment footprint, and waste production while ensuring product quality. Understanding and implementing advanced control methods like Model Predictive Control (MPC) is critical to handle complex interactions, maintain stability, and optimize performance in these integrated systems.

This area investigates novel membrane materials and supported systems that enable selective separation of gases (e.g., CO2 from flue gases, olefin/paraffin separations) or contaminants (e.g., antibiotics from wastewater). Enhanced materials such as mixed matrix membranes incorporating functional nanomaterials aim to overcome trade-offs between permeability and selectivity, while supported ionic liquid membranes offer high extraction efficiency with tunable selectivity. Molecular-level understanding of transport mechanisms guides material design. These efforts address energy efficiency, environmental sustainability, and industrial applicability of membrane-based separation.

With increasingly complex and rich datasets from multi-dimensional separation techniques (e.g., chromatography), chemometric approaches—multivariate analysis, experimental design, pattern recognition—enable extraction of meaningful information, enhanced method development, and better decision-making. This theme covers applications in analytical chemistry including volatile, soluble, and colloidal samples and extends to forensic and toxicological contexts where data robustness, automation, and reliable interpretation are critical for regulatory and legal purposes.

This theme focuses on developing predictive models and software tools using physicochemical property inputs to expedite and optimize separation media selection and process design, minimizing experimental resource usage. Examples include surface-property based prediction of monoclonal antibody behavior on hydrophobic interaction chromatography resins and web-based automated sizing tools for multiphase separators in oil and gas. These modeling approaches enhance efficiency, accuracy, and reliability in designing separation processes critical for pharmaceutical manufacturing and hydrocarbon processing.

This research theme explores the design and characterization of novel adsorbent materials modified with polymers or functional groups to improve adsorption capacity, selectivity, and regeneration for contaminants such as pesticides, antibiotics, and dyes in aqueous environments. The optimization of surface chemistry, porosity, and interaction mechanisms is critical for achieving efficient contaminant removal while ensuring reusability and operational feasibility. Understanding adsorption kinetics and isotherms under various conditions guides development of sustainable wastewater treatment technologies.