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NJIT professor Kamalesh Sirkar honored for his research
Using a colander to separate pasta from the water in which it was cooked is a commonplace kitchen experience. But what about the cooking water that usually disappears down the drain? Suppose you had a colander with holes that could not only separate pasta and water, but just as easily remove the salt and starch added to the water in the cooking process - making the water so pure that it would taste great.
In principle, this is exactly what can be done with membrane separation, a valuable technology, made even more valuable in recent years thanks to the work of NJIT Distinguished Chemical Engineering Professor Kamalesh Sirkar of Bridgewater.
Last week, the NJIT Board of Overseers awarded him the Excellence in Research Prize and Medal for his body of work which includes 24 patents.
"I am honored to have been chosen for this award," Sikar told some 200 colleagues, friends of the university and students who gathered last week for the ceremony and his talk about the uses of membrane separation technology, especially in desalination.Today, membrane separation technology has secured niches in industries ranging from brewing beer to manufacturing pharmaceuticals. This technology is also integral to meeting stringent standards for the purity of the water and even air. It is key to preventing explosions in aircraft fuel tanks and helping people with kidney disease. "Membrane separation will become the best technology for future applications that require separating components in a liquid or gas," Sikar said. "You can achieve the highest levels of purity at costs lower than those of alternative processes."
The basic principles of membrane separation have been known for a long time. Intestines in animals and humans are semi-permeable membranes, and early experiments to study the process of separation were performed by chemists using samples of animal intestine. However, it wasn't until the early 1960s that the use of membranes for separation applications turned the corner toward practicality when two UCLA researchers fabricated a synthetic membrane from a material similar to plastic.
The researchers demonstrated that reverse osmosis achieved with their membrane could reject salt and produce fresh water at a rate sufficient for real-world use.
"Today such plants are used in the US," Sirkar said. "But not as much as they could be." He predicted that by 2040, most US water treatment plants will use this technology because of the obvious advantages. "It's a compact technology with relatively low energy consumption that can operate at room temperature for many different applications. It's also a green technology," he said.
In Sirkar's NJIT lab, recent groundbreaking work in the field has included a membrane distillation technique that can recover a larger fraction of water from brine than reverse osmosis; a selective protein ultrafiltration method that could rival chromatography as a process for protein purification; and gas permeation membranes that facilitate the separation of carbon dioxide from air by allowing the carbon dioxide to pass through the membrane up to eighteen-thousand times faster than oxygen and nitrogen.
— ANDY LAGOMARSINO, NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
