Lin Li

PhD Candidate
Contact Details
T: +61-2-9385-4339
E: lin.li@student.unsw.edu.au
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Room 208, Chemical Sciences Bldg
The University of New South Wales
Sydney, 2052, Australia

Profile

Education

  • Master of Science in Water & Environmental Engineering, Masdar Institute of Science & Technology, UAE
  • Bachelor of Science in Material Science & Engineering, Shandong University, China

Research Project

Research Project Title: Development of composite membranes for membrane distillation

Membrane distillation (MD), using vapour pressure differential to drive a membrane separation process, is a promising desalination technique due to its ability to use waste heat and handle high salt concentrations. However, one of the major barriers for MD is membrane wetting.

 
For this project, composite membranes will be fabricated by coating a very thin layer of high water permeability polymer on a microporous support to prevent wetting, and the corresponding wetting and fouling performances will be compared with the previous superhydrophobic membranes developed in our group. In addition, these composite membranes can be used in membrane distillation crystallization for brine treatment, and solids product recovery, which is also one aspect of this project. Furthermore, the improvement of microporous support would also be one potential scope, based on the previous related work by addition of functionalized silica.

Supervisors