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It remains a great challenge for the simple and affordable production of membranes for oil/water separation. We prepare low-cost but highly efficient paper-based membranes for oil/water separation through hydrophobic modification to filter papers. The simple modification contains only two steps: a thin layer of aluminum oxide is first coated on the surface of the filter paper by atomic layer deposition, and silane molecules are subsequently coupled on the precoated aluminum oxide layer via their reaction with hydroxyl groups on the surface. Both the alumina layer and the silanization layer are very thin with a total thickness less than 10 nm. The modified filter paper is endowed with strong hydrophobicity and oleophilicity, therefore exhibits strongly retarded permeation to water and enhanced permeation to nonpolar oils. The modified filter paper is demonstrated to show excellent separation efficiencies greater than 90% in the separation of various types of oils and organic solvents from their mixtures wi...

In order to purify lactoferrin from crude sweet whey in one step, an expanded bed adsorption process was proposed with cation-exchanger Fastline SP. A series of experiments were carried out to assess the possibility of this process and optimize the operating conditions. First the adsorption equilibrium and kinetics of lactoferrin with Fastline SP were measured. The results indicated that Fastline SP had a fast adsorption of lactoferrin and was suitable for high-velocity operation. Then the expansion properties, liquid mixing, and breakthrough behaviors in the expanded bed were investigated, and the expansion factor was set at 2.0. In addition, the elution condition was optimized as 0.5 M NaCl in the phosphate buffer (pH 7.0). Finally, lactoferrin was successfully recovered with a high purity of 88.5% and a reasonable recovery of 77.1% in a single step. The purification factor reached 553.