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Our research

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Research excellence

CMST has many core areas of research and applied research activities, which are supported by academics and researchers from within the UNSW School of Chemical Engineering. Our activities cover virtually everything to do with membrane and the technology we develop is also successfully applied to non-water related areas.

At UCMST, a balance is maintained between the fundamental research and more applied studies. The former is principally funded through Australian Research Council (ARC) grants.
The latter are largely funded by other agencies such as Cooperative Research Centres (CRC) and industry.

The research objectives of the Centre include:

  • Physico-chemical characterisation of the structure, properties and transport mechanisms in synthetic membranes.
  • Development of sustainable membrane processes for environmental and industrial applications
  • Development of improved engineering aspects of membrane module design, operation and process control.
  • Development of novel membranes and membrane processes.
  • Development of methods to overcome or control the deposition and attachment of solutes and biofilms (fouling) during separation processes.
  • Development of instruments and procedures for the characterisation of membranes, in particular for monitoring and control membranes during process operation.

Research areas

Membrane material development

The centre has invested significant funding and resources over the last few years to develop several technology platforms for the development of new membrane materials, four fouling mitigation, degradation of trace micropollutant, and novel applications.

Water treatment

With increased pressure on our water supplies and the increased value of water from a commercial perspective the last decade has seen membranes used in water treatment move from being a niche technology to a fundamental unit in the treatment process.

Food & agriculture

Membrane filtration is state-of-the-art technology for clarification, fractionation and concentration within the food industry, and the centre has had a long history of membrane research in this are, in particular, with the dairy industry and this relationship continues with an ongoing collaborations with Dairy Innovation Australia.

Process design & modelling

We use advanced modelling techniquestogether with state-of-the-art experimental characterisation techniques to optimise the design of membrane module and large scale water and wastewater treatment plants.

Greenhouse gas technology

In the topical area of CO2 capture, the centre as devoted significant resources in the last few years, as the gas separation membrane process offers a unique set of benefits over the existing amine solvent absorption process for CO2 separation and capture.

Bio-separations

Conventional membrane processes struggle to function at the limits of very high viscosity and high solid feeds faced in bioseparations applications such as biomass, biofuels and food processing. 

Archived research projects

Search our entire database of archived research projects via keywords or filter by research area.