MEM4CHEM: Membranes for chemical process innovation

Membrane downstream processing (DSP) offers many opportunities to make process water purification, food supplement concentration and fatty acid hydrogenations more sustainable. Zuyd University of Applied Sciences (ZUYD)/Center of Expertise (CoE) CHemelot Innovation and Learning Labs (CHILL) and Utrecht University of Applied Sciences (HU)/ Utrecht Science Park Innovation Lab (I-Lab) will extend their current field labs with (reactor-)membrane set-ups to assist small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with implementation and dissemination of membrane DSP. Experimental and theoretical scale-up will quantify the membrane DSP contribution to the transition of the chemical industry to become climate neutral. The MEM4CHEM consortium spans the chemical and high tech equipment (HTE) sectors and covers all aspects related to hardware, i.e. reactors, membranes and gas/liquid streams, to implement sustainable innovations for chemical end users. The membrane DSP field labs will be disseminated to extend the research network.
In MEM4CHEM the overarching question: How can we implement (reactor-)membrane DSP set-ups in chemical process innovation and disseminate their advantages? and research question: How far can energy/material savings be increased in chemical processes by the use of membrane DSP? will be answered by:
i) extending field labs with modular plug-and-play (reactor-)membrane set-ups tailored for the chemical process industry.
ii) establishing guidelines for further optimization/upscaling.
iii) quantifying energy and material savings using membrane DSP.
iv) speeding up industrial implementation of membrane DSP by dissemination, research network expansion, integration of membrane knowledge in education and establishing young professionals as knowledgeable ambassadors.
SMEs will be supported by:
a) dissemination of the advantages of membrane DSP high tech equipment to facilitate implementation.
b) the possibility for SME end users to quantify energy- and material savings in accessible field labs.