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Water scarcity is receiving increasing attention worldwide and becoming more challenging in view of expanding population, climate change and socio-economic activities. Membrane filtration and separation technologies have been widely used for water reuse and seawater desalination, but most of these processes are energy-intensive. It is important to further develop highly-effective and energy-efficient membrane-based water treatment technologies to address the challenge imposed by the water-energy nexus.

As a nation with limited natural resources, Singapore has been actively involved in the membrane related activities in various levels. This presentation will highlight our efforts in developing novel membranes at the Singapore Membrane Technology Centre (SMTC). In particular, the developments of biomimetic reverse osmosis (RO) membranes with aquaporins and without aquaporins and low pressure nanofiltration (NF) membranes will be presented in terms of membrane formation and scale-up production for effective water reuse and desalination. Taking the opportunity, the NTU and the SMTC will be also briefly introduced. 

About Speaker:

rof. Rong Wang is a Full Professor and President’s Chair in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. She also holds the position of Director, Singapore Membrane Technology Centre (SMTC) at NEWRI, NTU. She is an elected Fellow of the Academy of Engineering Singapore, and the founding President of Membrane Society in Singapore (MEMSIS). She served as the Chair of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) at NTU from 2014 to 2020.

Prof. Wang has over 30 years of experience in Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Water and Energy related research and innovation. She specializes in novel membrane development for water production and wastewater treatment, liquid purification and gas separation, and in the development of novel hybrid membrane system and process simulation. She has over 300 SCI tracked journal publications with citation times over 19,000 and h-index of 76, as shown in Web of Science as Oct. 2021. Moreover, she is the inventor of 30 patents/technical disclosures for novel membrane fabrication. Her inventions led to the setup of three membrane-based spin-off companies in Singapore.

Prof. Wang serves as an Editor of Journal of Membrane Science (JMS) since 2014, and became Editor-in-Chief of JMS in 2020. She is on the editorial board of Desalination since 2011. She was featured among the top 25 leading water researchers globally by Lux Research in 2013, and was the winner of Singapore’s Minister for National Development R&D Award in 2013. She received a prestigious “Alternative Water Prize” from Saudi Arabia in 2016. She was also awarded the Nanyang Research Award in 2018. She is in list of the SG100 Women in Tech 2021.