The Sustainable Separation Laboratory

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Distillation and other thermally-driven separations are extremely energy-intensive consuming roughly half of U.S. industrial energy use. Transport in molecularly-selective membranes is driven by chemical potential gradient, and membrane-based separations can be more energy-efficient with significantly lower carbon dioxide emissions. The Sustainable Separation Lab at the University of Maryland aims to reduce the carbon dioxide footprints and enhance the sustainability of large-scale separations by creating molecularly-selective synthetic membranes that can debottleneck or replace thermally-driven separations. To achieve this goal, our research focuses on 1) Molecular-scale design of materials chemistry and structure, 2) Understanding transport fundamentals in new membrane materials, and 3) Translating new membrane materials to scalable hollow fiber devices with ultra-thin separation layers.

Chen Zhang

Assistant Professor
301-405-8566 | czhang71@umd.edu
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