Membrane separation is a technology used for material separation in liquid phases using a membrane as a separator/filter. The feed solution passes through the membrane, which then captures or blocks unwanted substances. Usually, the applied membrane is high selectivity semi-permeable membranes. Membrane Distillation (MD) and Support Liquid Membrane (SLM) are a few competitive membrane separation technologies.
Typical applications of membrane separation are seawater and brackish water desalination, brines and high-concentrated waters treatment, water purification, contaminated water treatment, elements recovery. Also, this process is applied in the industry such as the pharmaceutical and chemical industry, metal extraction, wastewater treatment, gas separation, and biotechnology.
Because of the advantages, we have started to research the application of membrane separation process, especially Membrane Distillation and Support Liquid Membrane. Our focus is on wastewater reclamation, material recovery, and membrane module modification. Also, we recovered valuable rare-earth elements from various sources by using SLM. In addition, we investigate the influence of operation parameters and the optimal operating parameters of the membrane separation process. In our recent research, we tried to recover ammonia, at the same time reclaimed water, from wastewater. The source of ammonia is from dyestuff wastewater and biogas slurry. We attempted to recover ammonia by using two MD configurations, VMD and DCMD. Moreover, we researched how effective AGMD for high conductivity wastewater reclamation. We discovered that It is possible to use MD to reduce the amount of wastewater to be treated. Higher quality permeate can be reused in the process. To optimize the operating conditions of existing MD systems, we analyze the effect of spacer material in AGMD. We test polypropylene, glass fiber, nylon, and stainless steel as spacer material.
Furthermore, we also build-up relationships with laboratories inside and outside Taiwan, especially, Vietnam, Indonesia and China. Here are some of our appealing research-topics, which had been accepted and published in the prestigious professional journals based on Web of Science (WOS) as below:

• Recovery of Neodymium from Waste Permanent Magnets by Hydrometallurgy Using Hollow Fibre Supported Liquid Membranes. Solvent Extraction Research and Development Japan. 2020.
• Simultaneous recovery of rare earth elements from waste permanent magnet (WPMs) leach liquor by solvent extraction and hollow fiber supported liquid membrane. Chemical Engineering and Processing. 2020.
• Recovery of rare earth elements from waste permanent magnet (WPMs) via selective leaching using the Taguchi method. Journal of the Taiwan Institute of Chemical Engineers. 2019.
  
  

Nonetheless, membrane separation has some disadvantage such as relatively high energy consumption; high module cost; and low permeate flux, which limited their application in industry. Against this perspective, we would like to develop a new MD configuration and its application, and also, we will extract new valuable material whilst looking for the suitable variables for industrial-scale. As environmental scientists and environmental engineers, we are developing our research framework as below: