During last few decades, membrane technology has emerged as an efficient technique over conventional methods due to its high removal capacity, ease in operation and cost effectiveness for wastewater treatment and production of clean water. Membrane based separations are commonly based on polymeric membranes because of their higher flexibility, easily pore forming mechanism, low cost and smaller space for installation as compared to inorganic membranes. Commonly employed membrane fabrication phase inversion method has been shortly reviewed in this article. Major limitation of membrane based separations is fouling and polymeric membranes being hydrophobic in nature are more prone to fouling. Fouling is a deposition of various colloidal particles, macromolecules (polysaccharides, proteins), salts etc. on membrane surface and within pores thus impedes membrane performance, reduces flux and results in high cost. Modification of polymeric membranes due to its tailoring ability with nanomaterials such as metal based and carbon based results in polymeric nano-composite membranes with high antifouling characteristics. Nanomaterials impart high selectivity, permeability, hydrophilicity, thermal stability, mechanical strength, and antibacterial properties to polymeric membranes via blending, coating etc. modification methods. Characterization techniques has also discussed in later section for studying morphological properties and performance of polymer nano-composite membranes. Graphical Abstract

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The microfluidic production of Janus/Hecate polymer microfibers with well-defined interfaces from miscible phases is reported. The process offers the tunability of the width and composition of each part constituting the...

Background: fiber diameter is one of the most important morphological parameters which drives the applications of microfibers. This creates a need for the development of processes capable of producing a large variety of microfibers with a given diameter. To this regards, microfluidic spinning has recently emerged as an outstanding and simple technique for the production of micro-and nanofibers with controllable size and morphology.Methods: herein, microfibers were produced from (macro)monomers or prepolymers (core phase) by in situ photoirradiation using a capillary-based microfluidic device and a miscible sheath phase of various viscosity. The effects of the flow rate of both phases as well as the viscosity of the sheath fluid, the capillary dimensions and the monomer volume fraction in core phase were thoroughly studied.Significant findings: by calculating the capillary number ratio from the ratios of sheath to core flow rate and viscosity, an empirical relationship which perfectly predicts the microfiber diameter as a function of monomer volume fraction, the capillary number ratio and capillary inner diameter but independent of its outer diameter is extracted. This result paves the way to the continuousflow production of microfibers with well-controlled morphological characteristics.