Hiroki Tomioka

Self‐Organized Liquid‐Crystalline Nanostructured Membranes for Water Treatment: Selective Permeation of Ions

A membrane with ordered 3D ionic nanochannels constructed by in situ photopolymerization of a thermotropic liquid-crystalline monomer shows high filtration performance and ion selectivity. The nanostructured membrane exhibits water-treatment performance superior to that of an amorphous membrane prepared from the isotropic melt of the monomer. Self-organized nanostructured membranes have great potential for supplying high-quality water.

High performance RO membranes for desalination and wastewater reclamation and their operation results

Reverse osmosis (RO) membrane is one of the most powerful tools for solving the global water crisis, and is used in a variety of water treatment scenes such as drinking water purification, waste-water treatment, boiler feed water production, ultra pure water production for semiconductor industry, etc. The desired performance of RO membrane varies according to quality of feed water being treated, and Toray has been developing RO membranes with suitable characteristic for each operating condition. RO membranes for seawater desalination and wastewater reclamation are especially regarded as most promising targets. Recently, high boron removal and energy saving RO membrane for seawater desalination and low fouling RO membrane for wastewater reclamation have been developed. In this paper, the prospect of attaining these renovative RO membrane, and furthermore, job references will be discussed.

Development of Nanostructured Water Treatment Membranes Based on Thermotropic Liquid Crystals: Molecular Design of Sub‐Nanoporous Materials

Abstract Supply of safe fresh water is currently one of the most important global issues. Membranes technologies are essential to treat water efficiently with low costs and energy consumption. Here, the development of self‐organized nanostructured water treatment membranes based on ionic liquid crystals composed of ammonium, imidazolium, and pyridinium moieties is reported. Membranes with preserved 1D or 3D self‐organized sub‐nanopores are obtained by photopolymerization of ionic columnar or bicontinuous cubic liquid crystals. These membranes show salt rejection ability, ion selectivity, and excellent water permeability. The relationships between the structures and the transport properties of water molecules and ionic solutes in the sub‐nanopores in the membranes are examined by molecular dynamics simulations. The results suggest that the volume of vacant space in the nanochannel greatly affects the water and ion permeability.

Discovery and structure-activity relationships of urea derivatives as potent and novel CCR3 antagonists.

The synthesis and structure-activity relationships of ureas as CCR3 antagonists are described. Optimization starting with lead compound 2 (IC(50)=190 nM) derived from initial screening hit compound 1 (IC(50)=600 nM) led to the identification of (S)-N-((1R,3S,5S)-8-((6-fluoronaphthalen-2-yl)methyl)-8-azabicyclo[3.2.1]octan-3-yl)-N-(2-nitrophenyl)pyrrolidine-1,2-dicarboxamide 27 (IC(50)=4.9 nM) as a potent CCR3 antagonist.