System Builders - Device Assembly from Nanoporous Materials Developed from Current Platform Grant (EP/J014974/1)

与加工业相关的资本和运营成本中，有一半以上是用于分离的。这是因为分离通常通过煮沸液体使其变成气体来实现，或者通过用大量溶剂稀释系统并在色谱系统中进行微分吸附来实现。这些办法需要大量资源，而且很复杂。膜可以用来简化这些问题。如果一种物质的混合物被压力压在一个膜上，而这个膜只对某些物质是可渗透的，那么我们就可以把能通过膜的分子和不能通过膜的分子分开。这种方法使用的溶剂和能源要少得多，而且比其他方法简单。毫不奇怪，人们对用膜分离和浓缩分子感兴趣已经有一段时间了。一个主要的成功是在海水淡化领域，膜被用来从海水中分离淡水。然而，膜通常不用于将有机混合物（如原油）分离成其组分，因为没有在有机液体中稳定的膜。最近，这种情况发生了变化-帝国理工学院的研究得到了平台资助“分子构建者：构建纳米多孔材料”的支持，已经开发出在大多数溶剂中稳定的膜，并提供高通量和分子之间的选择性。这些已经通过帝国分拆公司膜提取技术商业化，该公司开始小规模生产。这引起了大公司的兴趣，他们看到了广泛使用的潜力，MET于2010年3月1日被赢创工业公司收购。赢创MET在西伦敦的一个大型生产基地进行了大量投资，英国已经成为先进有机溶剂纳滤膜（OSN）开发和制造的世界领导者。现在，我们需要在这一初步成功的基础上再接再厉。我们开发了具有可控微孔结构的创新性新材料，从而实现卓越的性能。但是我们还没有开发出将这些技术和知识应用到设备中，并将这些设备用于商业和工业中的分子分离。在平台资助更新期间，我们将彻底改变设备制造和应用平台。我们将使用我们创造的技术来制造复合材料，并将其纳入微型设备，如柱，单片和模块。我们将使用这些设备来处理目前膜无法达到的分离问题，例如在连续操作的反应器中合成药物，生产治疗需要的DNA和RNA以及气体分离。为了成功实现这一雄心勃勃的目标，我们需要在各种技术方面培训我们的研究团队，其中大部分是我们目前没有的。我们将通过与帝国理工学院和世界各地的其他研究团队合作来实现这一目标，他们是我们想要学习的技术专家，并从这些团队中聘请新的博士后加入我们的团队，他们将加快技能转移。新技术的综合，以及它们与我们现有技能的结合，将导致世界领先的新科学和工程，以及在英国制造的新产品。

Separations demand more than half of all the capital and operating costs associated with processing industries. This is because separation is often achieved by boiling liquids to make them turn into a gas, or by diluting systems with large volumes of solvents and carrying out differential adsorption in a chromatography systems. These approaches are resource intensive and complex. Membranes might be used to simplify these problems. If a mixture of materials is pressed by pressure against a membrane, and the membrane is permeable to only some of the materials, then we can separate themolecules that pass through the membrane from those that do not. This uses much less solvents and energy, and is lesscomplex than alternatives.Not surprisingly, people have been interested in using membranes to separate and concentrate molecules for some time. A major success is in the area of desalination, where membranes are used to separate fresh water out of seawater. However, membranes are not generally used to separate organic mixtures, like crude oil, into its components, because there were no membranes stable in organic liquids. This has changed recently - research at Imperial College, supported by the platform grant "Molecular Builders: Constructing Nanoporous Materials" has developed membranes that are stable in most solvents, and offer high throughput rates and selectivity between molecules. These have been commercialised through an Imperial spin out company, Membrane Extraction technology, who began production on a small scale. This generated interest from large companies, who saw the potential for widespread use, and MET was acquired by Evonik Industries on 1 March 2010. Evonik MET made a substantial investment in a large scale manufacturing facility in West London, and the UK has become a world leader in the development and manufacture of advanced Organic Solvent Nanofiltration (OSN) membranes.Now, we need to build on this initial success. We have developed innovative new materials with controlled micro-porous structure that lead to outstanding performance. But we have not yet developed the skills and knowledge to put these into devices and to use these devices in molecular separations that would be applicable in commerce and industry.For the platform grant renewal period, we will revolutionise the device fabrication and application platforms. We will use the techniques we have created to manufacture composite materials and incorporate these into micro-devices such as columns, monoliths and modules. We will use the these devices to deal with separation problems that current membranes cannot reach, such as synthesis of pharmaceuticals in continuously operating reactors, production of DNA and RNA for therapeutic needs, and the separation of gases.To succeed in this ambitious goal we will need to train our research team in a diverse range of techniques, most of which we do not have currently. We will do this by working with other research teams at Imperial College and around the world who are experts in the techniques we want to learn, and by hiring new post-docs into our team from these groups, who will speed skills transfer. The synthesis of the new techniques, and their combination with our existing skills, will lead to world beating new science and engineering, and new products manufactured in the UK.