Prof. Kuo-Lun Tung of Chemical Engineering Awarded 2020 Excellence in Technology Transfer Award, MOST

Vice Minister Yu-Han Tsou (鄒幼涵), MOST and Prof. Kuo-Lun Tung (童國倫)

 

The research team “NTU MAGIC Processes (Membrane-Assisted Green and Innovative Chemical Processes)” led by Prof. Kuo-Lun Tung (童國倫) of Chemical Engineering has achieved successful technology transfer and commercialized sales application in start-up company by the research of innovative porous composite inorganic membrane, which is awarded 2020 Excellence in Technology Transfer Award, MOST. In addition to technology transfer funds, this technology has been paid derivative royalty income for three consecutive years, which is a successful model for technology transfer.

Prof. Tung states that circular economy is the world trend of industrial revolution and value innovation. Taiwan, which focuses on manufacturing, has opportunities in the circular economy to effectively use and recycle resources. Therefore, the global circular economy trend is to establish the process of recycling technology to reduce the burden of end-of-pipe treatment. If we want to make Taiwan the leader in this industrial technology, high-efficiency separation and purification technologies and materials used in the process must be developed to solve the problems from the source, and then focus on the development of water recovery, resource recycling, energy saving and low-grade heat recovery technology.

With this goal in mind, the NTU MAGIC team develops innovative inorganic composite membranes and their applications to meet the needs of resource reuse, expecting the market growth rate of inorganic membranes to be 11.7%, higher than 9.47% of the total separation membrane market in the next 5 years, showing that inorganic membranes and inorganic composite membranes have gradually become the focus of the market. As the industrial process environment is either high temperature, strong acid, strong alkali, or strong solvents, only materials with high chemical resistance and high environmental endurance can truly achieve the goal of recycling resources in circular economy. Once the innovative inorganic membrane products are produced, the market will be more optimistic.

The NTU MAGIC team has successfully created a super high-performance porous inorganic film by plasma spray coating, which overcomes the energy-consuming and time-consuming shortcomings of the traditional sintering process. The energy consumption of the manufacturing process is only 1/6 of the traditional sintering process, and at the same time, solves the problems of module bonding and sealing. This innovative ceramic composite membrane can be used in the treatment of industrial waste liquid, process liquid, and high-temperature gas. This technology has been commercialized and continuously produced automatically, reaching an industrial scale, and has been launched in the manufacturing process by large domestic petrochemical companies and electronics factories.