Prof Dan Zhao obtained his PhD degree in Inorganic Chemistry under the supervision of Prof. Hong-Cai Joe Zhou at Texas A&M University in 2010. After finishing his postdoctoral training at Argonne National Laboratory, he joined the Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at National University of Singapore in July 2012 as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in July 2018. His research interests include advanced porous materials and membranes with the applications in clean energy and environmental sustainability.

Invited Talk (Gas Separation)

Advanced Porous Membranes for Gas Separation and Water Treatment​

Dan Zhao

Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, National University of Singapore

(chezhao@nus.edu.sg)

The recent decade has witnessed the booming development of advanced porous materials (APMs) such as metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and covalent organic frameworks (COFs). Unlike their conventional counterparts (e.g., silica, activated carbon, zeolite), APMs have crystalline structures, uniform yet tunable pore size, and versatile chemical compositions suitable as membrane materials for separation processes. In this talk, I will introduce our group’s work on the fabrication of advanced porous membranes containing APMs for gas separation and water treatment. Our membrane types include mixed matrix membranes (MMMs), two-dimensional membranes (2DMs), and polycrystalline membranes (PCMs). We are especially interested in their applications in clean energy and environmental sustainability, such as CO₂ capture and desalination.