This MedLibrary.org supplementary page on Artificial membrane is provided directly from the open source Wikipedia as a service to our readers. Please see the note below on authorship of this content, as well as the Wikipedia usage guidelines. To search for other content from our encyclopedia supplement, please use the form below:
Related Sponsors
An artificial membrane, also called a synthetic membrane, is a membrane prepared for separation tasks in laboratory and industry. Its active part, which permits selective transport of material, usually consists of polymers or ceramics, seldom glass or metals. A membrane may contain auxiliary parts for mechanical support, drainage, patch etc.
The driving force of the material transport is given by concentration, pressure, electrical or chemical gradient across the membrane. Membranes can be prepared in the form of flat sheets, tubes, capillaries and hollow fibres. Membranes are built in membrane systems like plate and frame, spiral-wound module, hollow fibre module, tube-in-shell module. Some of the most common artificial membranes are polymeric membranes. Under some conditions ceramic membranes can be utilized with advantage.
Such membranes are employed in a wide range of membrane operations, such as microfiltration, ultrafiltration, reverse osmosis, pervaporation, gas separation, dialysis or chromatography. The applications depend on the type of functionality incorporated in the membrane, which can be based on size-exclusion, chemical affinity or electrostatics.
Typical applications in which membranes have been used are water purification, removal of microorganisms in dairy products, water desalination, dehydrogenation of natural gas, hemodialysis or as components of fuel cells.
- See also: Membrane
- See also: Semipermeable membrane
 |
This chemistry article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 31 May 2008, at 05:55.
Wikipedia Authorship and Review
Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by MedLibrary.org. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org.
Wikipedia Usage Guidelines
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Artificial membrane".
The URL for this specific entry is:
All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.