Dr. Zhiping Lai's Talk

Oct 19, 2015 - 15:00

Oct 19, 2015 - 16:00

Room # 118 Chem. Engg. Dept.

Seminars

Dr. Zhiping Lai SABIC Chair Associate Professor Chemical and Biological Engineering Division of Physical Science and Engineering King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)

Abstract: Membrane technology is going to play a more and more important role in the era of renewable energy since harvest of renewable energy from their sources often impose much higher challenges for separation. For example processes such as CO2 capture separation of natural gas harvest of biofuel or hydrogen etc. all require high efficient but low cost separation processes which can be hardly achieved by conventional separation techniques. From the other hand membrane technology has been proven their feasibility in large-scale processes such as seawater desalination as a cost and energy efficient separation technology. Development of novel membrane materials is often a key to develop high efficient membranes. For example membranes made from inorganic porous materials with uniform pore size such as zeolites have demonstrated excellent separation performances over conventional polymeric membranes. However inorganic porous materials are often suffered from their limited topological framework structures and chemical flexibility. Metal organic frameworks (MOFs) as a new class of ordered porous materials with an inorganic-organic hybrid structure are able to achieve rational designs in both structure and functionalities and have showed high thermal stability. Hence it can be a very promising type of membrane materials. In this talk we will discuss the synthesis methods for preparation of high quality MOF membranes and their prospective applications in separation of hydrocarbon mixtures such as C2/C3 and olefin/paraffin mixtures.Biography: Dr. Zhiping Lai is current a SABIC Chair associate professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering in the division of Physical Science and Engineering of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). He is the founding faculty member of the KAUST Advanced Membranes and Porous Materials Center.Dr. Lai’s research mainly focuses on development of high-performance inorganic membranes out of ordered porous materials such as zeolites mesoporous silica metal organic frameworks etc. and their applications in gas separations seawater desalination hydrocarbon isomer separations waste-water treatments recovery of industrial organic solvents membrane reactors and chemical sensors.Dr. Lai received his bachelor and master degrees from Tsinghua University China and PhD degree from University of Massachusetts Amherst. After two years postdoc training in the department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science of University of Minnesota Twin Cities he joined Nanyang Technological University as an assistant professor. He joined KAUST in 2009 as a founding faculty.