High Virus Removal by Self-Organized Nanostructured 2D Liquid-Crystalline Smectic Membranes for Water Treatment.

To obtain high quality of drinking water free from biocontaminants is especially important issue. A new strategy employing smectic liquid-crystalline ionic membranes exhibiting 2D structures of layered nanochannels for water treatment is proposed for efficient virus removal and sufficient water flux. The smectic A (SmA) liquid-crystalline membranes obtained by in situ polymerization of an ionic mesogenic monomer are examined for removal of three distinct viruses with small size: Qβ bacteriophage, MS2 bacteriophage, and Aichi virus.

Development of Nanostructured Water Treatment Membranes Based on Thermotropic Liquid Crystals: Molecular Design of Sub-Nanoporous Materials.

Supply of safe fresh water is currently one of the most important global issues. Membranes technologies are essential to treat water efficiently with low costs and energy consumption. Here, the development of self-organized nanostructured water treatment membranes based on ionic liquid crystals composed of ammonium, imidazolium, and pyridinium moieties is reported.

Highly Efficient Virus Rejection with Self-Organized Membranes Based on a Crosslinked Bicontinuous Cubic Liquid Crystal.

To remove viruses from water, the use of self-assembling liquid crystals is presented as a novel method for the synthesis of membranes with a regular pore size (below 1 nm) and controlled pore structures. Nanostructured bicontinuous cubic liquid-crystalline (LC) thin films are photopolymerized onto a polysulfone support layer. It is found that these membranes reject the virus, Qβ bacteriophage (≈20 nm diameter) by >99.

Self-organized liquid-crystalline nanostructured membranes for water treatment: selective permeation of ions.

A membrane with ordered 3D ionic nanochannels constructed by in situ photopolymerization of a thermotropic liquid-crystalline monomer shows high filtration performance and ion selectivity. The nanostructured membrane exhibits water-treatment performance superior to that of an amorphous membrane prepared from the isotropic melt of the monomer. Self-organized nanostructured membranes have great potential for supplying high-quality water.

A membrane-integrated fermentation reactor system: its effects in reducing the amount of sub-raw materials for D-lactic acid continuous fermentation by Sporolactobacillus laevolacticus.

Continuous fermentation by retaining cells with a membrane-integrated fermentation reactor (MFR) system was found to reduce the amount of supplied sub-raw material. If the amount of sub-raw material can be reduced, continuous fermentation with the MFR system should become a more attractive process for industrialization, due to decreased material costs and loads during the refinement process. Our findings indicate that the production rate decreased when the amount of the sub-raw material was reduced in batch fermentation, but did not decrease during continuous fermentation with Sporolactobacillus laevolacticus.

Membrane-integrated fermentation system for improving the optical purity of D-lactic acid produced during continuous fermentation.

This report describes the production of highly optically pure D-lactic acid by the continuous fermentation of Sporolactobacillus laevolacticus and S. inulinus, using a membrane-integrated fermentation (MFR) system. The optical purity of D-lactic acid produced by the continuous fermentation system was greater than that produced by batch fermentation; the maximum value for the optical purity of D-lactic acid reached 99.

A novel membrane-integrated fermentation reactor system: application to pyruvic acid production in continuous culture by Torulopsis glabrata.

This paper describes the performance of a novel bio-reactor system, the membrane-integrated fermentation reactor (MFR), for efficient continuous fermentation. The MFR, equipped with an autoclavable polyvinylidene difluoride membrane, has normally been used for biological wastewater treatment. The productivity of the MFR system, applied to the continuous production of pyruvic acid by the yeast Torulopsis glabrata, was remarkably high.