Jin Wanqin

Membranes and membrane reactors: state of the art, challenges, and opportunities

Membranes and membrane reactors are providing approaches to realize high-efficient separation and reaction/separation coupling, thus making increasingly important contributions to address the global issues of energy shortage, environmental pollution, and resources depletion. In this work, we categorize membranes into three main groups, macroporous, microporous, and nonporous membranes, according to their mass transfer and separation mechanisms. We review the latest significant achievements of these membranes, and discuss the bottlenecks and potential breakthoughs of their future development. Furthermore, we make a more detailed survey on the recent progresses in membrane reactors, and conclude this paper with a perspective on the research areas requiring focused attentions of membranes and membrane reactors.