ABSTRACT: Membrane technology has now established itself as an indispensable component in chemical and processing industries. The presentation will give a historical account on membrane research and development in China over the past 6 decades. The speaker started his academic career with seawater desalination by membranes in the mid-1960s, and it has then expanded to other membrane processes. This talk will focus on ion exchange membranes and composite membranes for electrodialysis, dialysis, chloro-alkali production, reverse osmosis, and nanofiltration. Other membranes and related processes, including gas separation, inorganic membranes, membrane reactors and membrane bioreactors, will also be briefly presented.
Bio-sketch: Prof. Congjie Gao is a Fellow of Chinese Academy of Engineering, and Dean of the School of Oceanic Science and Engineering at Zhejiang University of Technology. He is a pioneer in membrane technology development for seawater desalination, wastewater treatment, and water reuse in China. Over the past 40 years, Prof. Gao has been working on all aspects of membrane separations involving reverse osmosis, ultrafiltration, nanofiltration and pervaporation. He was a Visiting Professor in our department in the early 1980s. His accomplishments are recognized by the top prize of the National Science & Technology Progress Award of China (1992), the Science and Technology Progress Prize (1998) from the Hong Kong-based non-governmental Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation, and many others. He has authored 4 books and ~400 papers in refereed journals.