• Korean Membrane Journal
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.58-66
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• 2006

The ${\beta}-glucosidase$ from olive fruit is of particular interest compared to the ones from other sources because it has shown to have high specifity to convert the oleuropein into dialdehydes, which have antibacterial activity and are of high interest for their application in the food and pharmaceutical fields. The enzyme is not yet commercially available and advanced clean and safe technologies for its purification able to maintain the functional stability are foreseen. The purification of this protein from fruit extracts has been already tempted by electrophoresis but either enzyme deactivation or high background with unclear profiles occurred. In this work, fruit extracts obtained from the ripening stage that showed the highest enzyme activity have been processed by diafiltration and ultrafiltration. Asymmetric membranes made of polyamide or polysulphone having 50 and 30 kDa molecular weight cut-off, respectively, were tested for the diafiltration process. Ultrafiltration membranes made of polyethersulfone with 4 kDa molecular weight cut-off were used to concentrate the dia-filtered permeate solutions. The efficiency of the separation processes was evaluated byenzyme activity tests using the hydrolysis of p-D-nitrophenyl-${\beta}$-D-glucopyranoside (pNPGlc) as reaction model. Qualitative and quantitative electrophoresis were applied to analyze the composition of protein solution before and after the membrane separation; in addition dot blot and western blot analyses were applied to verify the presence of ${\beta}-glucosidase$ in the processed fractions. The overall results showed that the ${\beta}-glucosidase$ functional stability was preserved during the membrane operations and the removal of 20 kDa proteins allowed to increase the specific activity of the enzyme of about 52% compared to the one present in the initial fruit extract.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.235-240
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• 2010

The aim of this paper is to evaluate and compare the performances of forward osmosis (FO) membranes using different materials. The FO membranes were synthesized using interfacial polymerization method on hydrophobic polysulfone (PSf) and relatively hydrophilic polyethersulfone (PES) supports. The FO performance such as flux and back diffusion was measured. The resulting fluxes of PSf and PES FO membranes were $4.3\;L/m^2hr$ and $17.8\;L/m^2hr$, respectively. The flux of the PES FO membrane was higher than that of the PSf FO membrane. The results indicated that hydrophillictity of the support membrane is important for increasing flux in FO process. Moreover, with decreasing the support layer thickness, flux increased considerably.

• Proceedings of the Membrane Society of Korea Conference
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• 2003.11a
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• pp.61-63
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• 2003

A major research objective related to proton exchange membrane(PEM) for DMFC is to achieve high proton conductivity over 10$^{-2}$ S/cm, high hydrolytic stability and low methanol permeability with low cost base materials. for the purpose, a lot of thermoplastic polymers such as polysulfones, polyethersulfone, polyetherketones, polyimides, polyoxadiazole, polyphosphazene and polybenzimidazol have been investigated. Amongst those polymers, polyimides have been suggested as a potential PEM due to their excellent thermal, chemical stability and good mechanical properties. Generally, polyimides are synthesized by polycondensation with numerious diamines and dianhydriedes. In our study, polyimide was prepared using non-sulfonated diamine, sulfonated diamine directly synthesized by fuming sulfuric acid, and naphthalenic dianhydride to improve the hydrolysis stability under acidic condition. Through monomer sulfonation-subsequent polymerization method, the high proton conducting capability and the desired sulfonation level were effectively controlled at the same time. To reduce severe methanol transport through the membrane, the chemical crosslinking among polymer chains was introduced using various crosslinking agents with different chain lengths. The crosslinked sulfonated polyimide membranes showed high proton conductivity up to 8.09$\times$10$^{-2}$ S/cm and from crosslinking effect methanol transport through the membranes was considerably reduced as compared with unmodified membranes. For increase of chain length of crosslinker, methanol permeability was adversely reduced to 10$^{-8}$ $\textrm{cm}^2$/s due to decrease of IEC and increase of crosslinking desity.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.226-236
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• 2013

The effect of $N_2$ back-flushing period (FT) and time (BT) was compared with the previous result used PES (polyethersulfone) beads loaded with titanium dioxide photocatalyst in hybrid process of alumina microfiltration and PP (polypropylene) beads coated with photocatalyst in viewpoints of membrane fouling resistance ($R_f$), permeate flux (J), and total permeate volume ($V_T$). The reason of nitrogen back-washing instead of the general air back-washing method is to minimize the possible effect of oxygen included in air on water quality analysis. As decreasing FT, $R_f$ decreased and J and $V_T$ increased. Treatment efficiency of dissolved organic matters (DOM) was 82.0%, which was the higher than 78.0% of the PES beads result. This means that PP beads coated with photocatalyst was the more effective than PES beads loaded with photo-catalyst in the DOM removal. As increasing BT, the final $R_f$ decreased and the final J increased, but $V_T$ was the maximum at BT 15 sec. The average treatment efficiency of turbidity did not have any trend as changing BT. As BT increasing from 6 sec to 30 sec, the treatment efficiency of DOM increased 11.8%, which was a little higher than the result of PES beads.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.136-143
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• 2013

Recently, a novel coating method using an aqueous doapmine solution was proposed, the deposited coating was found to have extraordinarily strong-adhesion to numerous materials such as metal and polymers. However, it has suffered from many controversy in scientific fields due to its final structure and deposited mechanisms. Here, we have proposed a new structure for final dopamine product coupling with solid state spectroscopic, thermal behavior, and gas transport behaviors of dopamine coated microporous polyethersulfone membranes. In its final analysis, the results represented that it is a supramolecular aggregated of monomers consisting of 5,6-dihydroxyindoline and its derivative in contrast to previously proposed polymeric structure.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.185-199
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• 2017

Low-pressure membrane filtration is increasingly used for tertiary treatment of wastewater effluent organic matter (EfOM), mainly comprising organic base/neutral compounds. In-line coagulation with underdosing, charge neutralization, and sweep floc conditions prior to ultrafiltration (UF) was studied to determine removals of the EfOM components and consequent reduction of fouling using polyethersulfone membranes. Coagulation and UF substantially reduced fouling for all coagulation conditions while removing from 7 to 38% of EfOM organic acids. From 7 to 16% of EfOM organic base/neutrals were removed at neutral pH but there was no significant removal for slightly acid coagulation conditions even though fouling was substantially reduced. Sweep floc produced the lowest resistance to filtration but may be inappropriate for in-line use due to the large added volume of solids. Charge-neutralization resulted in poor recovery of the initial flux with hydraulic cleaning. Under-dosing paralleled sweep floc in reducing hydraulic resistance to filtration (for sub-critical flux) and the initial flux was also easily recovered with hydraulic cleaning. Hydrophobic and hydrophilic base/neutrals were identified on the fouled membranes but as previously reported the extent of fouling was not correlated with accumulation of organic base/neutrals.

• Macromolecular Research
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.553-558
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• 2004

An ultrafiltration membrane (polyethersulfone, PM 10) was surface-modified by treating it with low-tem­perature plasmas of oxygen, acrylic acid (AA), acetylene, diaminocyolohexane (DACH), and hexamethyldisiloxane (HMDSO). The effects that these modifications have on the filtration efficiency of a membrane in waste water treat­ment were investigated. The oxygen, AA, and DACH plasma-treated membranes became more hydrophilic. The water contact angles ranged from < $10^{\circ}\;to\;55^{\circ}$ depending on the type of plasma and the treatment conditions. The oxygen plasma-treated membranes displayed a higher initial flux $(312-429\%),$ but lower rejection $(6-91\%),$ than did an untreated membrane. The AA plasma-treated membranes displayed lower or higher initial flux $(42-156\%),$ depending upon the treatment conditions, but higher rejection $(224-295\%)$ in all cases. The DACH plasma-treated membranes displayed lower initial flux. All of them, especially the AA plasma-treated membrane, displayed improved fouling resistance with either a slower or no flux decline. Acetylene and HMDSO plasma-treated membranes became more hydrophobic and displayed both lower initial flux and lower fouling resistance.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.31 no.6
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• pp.393-403
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• 2021

Enzymes are important class of catalyst for biotransformation. Stability and reusability of enzymes during the catalysis process is a key issue. Activity of enzyme can be enhanced by its immobilization on a suitable substrate by creation of specific microenvironment. A variety of membranes has been used as substrate due to the biocompatibility and simpler method to tune hydrophilicity/hydrophobicity property of the membrane surface. In this review, polymer membranes including cellulose, polyacrylonitrile (PAN), polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF), polyethersulfone (PES) are introduced and discussed in detail. Biodegradation of organic contaminants by immobilized enzyme is an environmental friendly process to reduce the contamination of environment in pharmaceutical company and textile industries. The controlled hydrolysis of oil can be performed in enzyme immobilized membrane bioreactor (EMBR), resulting in reducing carbon emission and reduced environmental pollution. Bioethanol and biodiesel are considered alternative fossil fuels that can be prepared in EMBR.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.147-156
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• 2005

It is well-known that polyethersulfone (PES) has high $CO_2$ selectivity over $N_2\;(or\;CH_4)$ and excellent pressure resistance of $CO_2$ plasticization among muy commercialized engineering plastics[1-4]. Asymmetric PES hollow fiber membranes for flue gas separation were developed by dry-wet spinning technique. The dope solution consists of PES, NMP and acetone. Water and water/NMP mixtures are used in outer and inner coagulants, respectively. Gas permeation rate (i.e., permeance) and $CO_2/N_2$ selectivity were measured with pure gas, respectively and the micro-structure of hollow fiber membranes was characterized by scanning electron microscopy. The effects of polymer concentration, ratio of NMP to acetone, length of air gap, evaporation condition and silicone coating were investigated on the $CO_2/N_2$ separation properties of the hollow fibers. Optimized PES hollow fiber membranes exhibited high permeance of $25\~50$ GPU and $CO_2/N_2$ selectivity of $30\~40$ at room temperature and have the apparent skin layer thickness of about $0.1\;{\mu}m$. The developed PES hollow fiber membranes, would be a good candidate suitable for the flue gas separation process.

• Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.263-270
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• 2019

Palm oil mill effluent (POME) is the largest pollutant discharged into the rivers of Malaysia. Thus UF membrane study was conducted to investigate the effect of pressure and stirring speed on performance of POME treatment and fouling of membrane. Two types of membrane polyethersulfone (PES) and regenerated cellulose (RC) with molecular weight cut-off (MWCO) 5 and 10 kDa were used in this study. Results showed that, as pressure increased, fouling increased however permeate quality improved, the best pressure was 1.0 bar, where the fouling was not too high and produce good permeate quality. As stirring speed increased, fouling reduced and permeate quality improved, however, when stirring speed increased from 600 rpm to 800 rpm, there was no significant improvement on the permeate quality. Therefore, the best condition was at 1.0 bar and 600 rpm. PES membrane with MWCO 5 kDa showed the best permeate quality, even fouling slightly higher than RC membrane. The permeate quality obtained were analyzed in term of dissolved solid, turbidity, suspended solid, biological oxygen demand ($BOD_5$) and chemical oxygen demand (COD) were 538 mg/L, 1.02 NTU, < 25 mg/L, 27.7 mg/L and 62.8 mg/L, respectively with dominant type of fouling is cake resistance. Thus, it can be concluded water reuse standard was successfully achieved in terms of $BOD_5$ and suspended solid.