The research team led by Professor Ye Wenyuan from School of Civil and Surveying Engineering has recently achieved a significant breakthrough with their study "Sub-4 nanometer porous membrane enables highly efficient electrodialytic fractionation of dyes and inorganic salts," published in Nature Communications, a prestigious journal under the Nature portfolio. This marks the first time our university has served as the primary corresponding institution for a paper in this high-impact journal.
The study addresses the critical challenge of treating high-salinity organic wastewater by developing an innovative electro-driven filtration method. By replacing conventional anion exchange membranes with a sub-4-nm dense ultrafiltration membrane, the team successfully integrated electrodialysis with pressure-driven membrane separation technologies. This novel approach achieved remarkable one-step separation efficiency of 98.15% desalination rate and 99.66% dye recovery rate for reactive dye/NaCl mixtures, significantly outperforming commercial anion exchange membrane systems.
Notably, the system demonstrated stable performance through eight consecutive operational cycles with minimal membrane fouling. The research highlights the potential of nano-porous membranes for advanced ion transport applications, providing crucial validation for replacing conventional pollution-prone membranes in electro-driven separation processes.
This breakthrough not only verifies the technical feasibility of nano-porous anion-conductive membranes but also paves a new way for synergistic resource recovery from industrial wastewater - simultaneously enabling dye purification and salt reclamation. The findings hold substantial implications for sustainable wastewater management in textile and related industries.
Full article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-58873-5
