Ludovic F. Dumée

• PhD, Ms Eng., Ms. Sci.
• Chief Science Officer - Professor at Element Zero

Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) have emerged as promising candidates for CO2 adsorption due to their ultrahigh-specific surface area and highly tunable pore-surface properties. However, their large-scale application is hindered by processing issues associated with their microcrystalline powder nature, such as dustiness, pressure drop, and poor mass...

Mineral carbonation or mineralization of CO2 using rocks or waste industrial materials is emerging as a viable carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, especially for smaller and medium-scale emitters where geological sequestration is not feasible. During mineralization processes, CO2 chemically reacts with alkaline earth metals in waste materi...

Metal nanoparticles have drawn great interest due to their unique properties for applications in the fields of catalysis, biomedicine and environmental science depending on the architecture of the metal nanoparticle composites. Amongst different designing routes, the chemical template deposition offers great flexibility in terms of the template sel...

Marine benthic organisms and their rapid growth in successional stages pose widespread challenges in macrofouling, causing operational issues for industrial plants and facilities. Current research, sea trials, and industrial studies lack insights into the practicality of macrofouling remediation technologies when applied to industrial sites experie...

Critical minerals will remain major active ingredients to most battery technologies for decades and innovation to improve extractive operations during spent battery effluent recycling must be carried out. Although the recovery of metal-ions in aqueous solutions has been demonstrated with membrane systems, including electrodialysis, process intensif...

Global water scarcity is leading to increasingly tense competition across populations. In order to complement the largely fast‐depleting fresh water sources and mitigate the challenges generated by brine discharge from desalination, atmospheric water harvesting (AWH) has emerged to support long‐term water supply. This work presents a novel alginate...

Water is readily available nearly anywhere as vapor. Thus, atmospheric water harvesting (AWH) technologies are seen as a promising solution to support sustainable water production. This work reports a novel semi-interpenetrating network, which integrates poly(pyrrole) doped with a hygroscopic salt and 2D graphene-based nanosheets optimally assemble...

In this study, the fabrication of biocompatible MXene-reinforced imprinted membranes (MX-AIM) capable of selectively capturing acetaminophen (APAP) molecules during filtration was demonstrated. The incorporation of MXene into a polymeric support membrane led to an overall improvement in both mechanical integrity and surface reactivity of the result...

Hybrid protein–copper nanoflowers have emerged as promising materials with diverse applications in biocatalysis, biosensing, and bioremediation. Sericin, a waste biopolymer from the textile industry, has shown potential for fabricating such nanoflowers. However, the influence of the molecular weight of sericin on nanoflower morphology and peroxidas...

Per- and polyfluorinated substances (PFAS) are stable, extremely toxic compounds that threaten human and environmental health. In various regions, water and wastewater streams contain 8 to 110 ng/L of PFAS. PFAS' hydrophobic and oleophobic characteristics, chemical and mechanical stability, and strong resistance to biological, chemical, and thermal...

Use of pharmaceutical products has seen a tremendous increase in the recent decades. It has been observed that more than thirty million tons of pharmaceuticals are consumed worldwide. The used pharmaceutical products are not completely metabolized in human and animal body. Therefore, they are excreted to the environment and remain there as persiste...

The distinctive cage-like structure of polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane (POSS) materials makes them highly effective fillers in composite membranes for separation applications. However, realizing their full potential in the application often requires specific surface functionalization with various groups. However, this requirement remains chall...

Green Membrane Technology Towards Environmental Sustainability covers experimental and theoretical aspects of greener membranes and processes. The book fills the gap in current literature and offers a platform that introduces and discusses new routes in fabricating green membranes and processes for developing green membranes. Although membranes and...

Biosystems and bioprocesses are typically not connected to arid areas, where the produced biomass and its availability are low. There is however a large potential for arid areas to become major bioeconomical actors via more localized biomass generation strategies. Indoor farming, bioengineering, and aquaculture have a great potential to be at the c...

MOF-based hybrid adsorbents for carbon capture are gaining increased attention as they can enhance key performance properties and scalability of MOFs. Yet, structuring these complex materials into mm-sized shaped particles to be used in actual process while maintaining the performance characteristics of the original powdered hybrids is challenging....

3D printing is established as an alternative microfabrication approach, and while printer resolution limits the direct 3D printing of pore features in the micron/submicron range, the use of nanoporous materials allows for the integration of porous membranes in 3D printed devices. Here, nanoporous membranes were formed by digital light projection (D...

Although waterborne virus removal may be achieved using separation membrane technologies, such technologies remain largely inefficient at generating virus-free effluents due to the lack of anti-viral reactivity of conventional membrane materials required to deactivating viruses. Here, a stepwise approach towards simultaneous filtration and disinfec...

The scarcity of fresh surface water resources combined with the over-exploitation of groundwater reserves across the Gulf Cooperation Countries (GCC) has increased the dependence on seawater desalination to satisfy drinking water requirements. However, the predominance of high relative humidity and temperatures within this region, offers an unrival...

The recovery of valuable resources from spent effluents is critical to ensure sustainable growth and reduce commodity shortages at global levels. Spent batteries are largely untapped resources containing multiple high-value metal ions that may be harnest and resued indefinitely to develop a circular battery economy. Challenges however lay with the...

Stimuli-responsive metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) are highly versatile porous materials with the ability to respond to different external stimuli, including temperature, pressure, pH, and light. The MOF properties can switch reversibly under specific light irradiation, opening the doors to various applications. This review focuses on design strate...

Given that surface water is the primary supply of drinking water worldwide, the presence of natural organic matter (NOM) in surface water presents difficulties for water treatment facilities. During the disinfection phase of the drinking water treatment process, NOM aids in the creation of toxic disinfection by-products (DBPs). This problem can be...

The development of electrochemically active ultrafiltration membrane reactors offers promising perspectives to achieve simultaneous separation and degradation of persistent organic pollutants and support triggered self-cleaning of membrane materials upon surface fouling. Here, electro-responsive ultrafiltration membranes were synthesised from drawa...

3D printing provides access to complex multilevel architectures, though the capability to routinely print and integrate structures of controlled porosity is limited. Herein, grayscale digital light projection 3D printing of a polymerization‐induced phase separation ink is introduced to directly 3D print functionally graded porous within a single la...

The implementation of hydrogen, as a renewable and clean energy source, has the potential to replace fossil fuels and to decarbonize hard-to-abate sectors, enabling sustainable development with a lower environmental footprint. At concentrations higher than 4 vol %, hydrogen is, however, highly flammable and real-time monitoring and detection are re...

Biological models with genetic similarities to humans are used for exploratory research to develop behavioral screening tools and understand sensory-motor interactions. Their small, often mm-sized appearance raises challenges in the...

Microplastics are a type of synthetic polymer with a particle size of<5 mm that are found in various environments. Considering the ever-increasing production of plastic and microplastics particles, their intrinsic toxicity, and feasible transportation via natural agents (e.g., wind, water streams, etc.); microplastics are known as one of the most c...

Stimuli-responsive membrane reactors offer advanced strategies towards simultaneous separation and degradation of persistent organic contaminants, allowing for triggered response through photo or electro stimuli. However, the scalable fabrication of stimuli-responsive nanoporous membranes with high selectivity and catalytic reactivity is still chal...

Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are key components for the capture of microplastics (MPs) before they are released into natural waterways. Removal efficiencies as high as 99% may be achieved but sub-micron MPs as well as nanoplastics have been overlooked because of analytical limitations. Furthermore, short MP fibres are of concern because of t...

Scarcity in fresh surface water resources combined with over-exploitation of groundwater reserves across the Middle East has increased the reliance on seawater desalination to meet the demand for potable water. The prevalence of high humidity and temperatures within this region, however, offers unprecedented potential for atmospheric water generati...

Nanomaterials such as copper nanoparticles have attracted significant attention because of their interesting size- and shape-dependent properties. However, their increased instability remains a challenge. This study therefore focuses on the growth of copper/copper oxide nanocrystals within nanofiber scaffolds, achieved by thermal reduction of poly(...

Sectorial approach for monitoring heavy metal pollution in rivers has failed to report realistic pollution status and associated ecological and human health risks. The increasing spread of heavy metals from different sources and emerging risks to human and environmental health call for reexamining heavy metal pollution monitoring frameworks. Also,...

The design of semiconducting metal oxide heterojunctions is promising to overcome conventional limitations associated to photocatalysis or electrocatalysis, such as fast recombination of electron-hole pairs and poor long-term stability leading to low catalytic performance. A route to tackle this issue is to design catalysts at the atomic levels by...

Membrane distillation (MD) process is a non-isothermal membrane technology, which has been widely used for seawater desalination and water treatment for past 50 years. During the last decade, the MD process opportunities applied to wastewater treatment have also attracted considerable attention. Challenging wastewater streams, such as colored efflu...

The high prevalence and persistence of microplastics (MPs) in pristine habitats along with their accumulation across environmental compartments globally, has become a matter of grave concern. The resilience conferred to MPs using the material engineering approaches for outperforming other materials has become key to the challenge that they now repr...

Arsenic contamination in water has threatened lives globally. The capability of arsenic to interact with the sulfhydryl group of amino acids in human body is considered as one of the factors leading to its increased toxicity and there is the dire need for development of better detection platforms. In this study, advantage of natural biomimetic inte...

A sectorial approach for assessing heavy metal pollution in rivers neglects the inter-relationship between its environmental compartments and thus fails to report realistic pollution status and associated ecological and human health risks. Therefore, a systems approach was adopted to assess heavy metal pollution and associated risks in the Yamuna R...

Motility is an indicator of sperm cell viability due to higher probability in swimming through the female reproductive tract and undergo fertilization with the egg cell. Centrifugation method is a technique to process high volume semen and isolate motile sperm cells but decreases the biochemical integrity of spermatozoa due to the contact with reac...

Per-/poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are an emerging class of environmental contaminants used as an additive across various commodity and fire-retardant products, for their unique thermo-chemical stability, and to alter their surface properties towards selective liquid repellence. These properties also make PFAS highly persistent and mobile acro...

2D nanoporous graphene nanomaterials have been considered for the development of high permeability membranes, compared to dense laminate architectures. Current perforation technologies, however, have struggled to deliver a membrane for practical use due to a lack of scalability and increased related complexity/costs over commercial membranes. Herei...

The remediation of persistent organic pollutants in surface and ground water represents a major environmental challenge worldwide. Conventional physico-chemical techniques do not efficiently remove such persistent organic pollutants and new remediation techniques are therefore required. Photo-electro catalytic membranes represent an emerging soluti...

The mass production of lithium-ion batteries and lithium-rich e-products that are required for electric vehicles, energy storage devices, and cloud-connected electronics is driving an unprecedented demand for lithium resources. Current lithium production technologies, in which extraction and purification are typically achieved by hydrometallurgical...

Water is the material basis for living organisms and one of the primary resources to maintain the sustainable development of the earth’s ecological environment. As a water purification method, nanofiltration (NF) separation technology has been widely considered by researchers in recent years. However, most of the studies on NF in the literature foc...

Although algae-based wastewater treatment has been claimed as a cost-effective and energy-efficient process compared to the traditional treatment technologies, there is a relatively slow adoption of algae-based wastewater treatment technologies. With the current focuses on zero carbon emission and circular economy, there is an exciting opportunity...

Membrane chromatography is recognised as a potential solution to streamline downstream processing for protein purification, where ion exchange membrane chromatography (IEMC) as a polishing step to remove impurities has been successfully demonstrated in small scales. Despite limited commercial adoption in large-scale production, the concept of IEMC...

One of the bottlenecks in realizing the potential of nanoporous graphene assemblies is the difficulty of engineering narrow pores and high surface density distributions, with a nanometer resolution across multilayer graphene assemblies using scalable approaches. Here, the authors develop a photocatalyzed perforation protocol to incorporate nanopore...

Metal hollow nanostructures have a wide range of potential applications in energy storage and conversion, owing to their low density, high surface to volume ratio, and high contact surface area. However, the fabrication of such nanostructures remains challenging to date, with most fabrication routes only limited to specific materials. Herein, a uni...

- Developing an effective synthesis method to enhance the porosity and electrochemical reactivity of graphene thin films (Advanced Materials Interfaces (2021), 2102129), which opened an avenue to obtain better diffusion of electrolyte liquids during charging/discharge processes in batteries/supercapacitors over a long period of time. - Developing n...

A narrow pore size distribution (PSD) + High-surface pore density + cylindrical shapes across perforated multilayer graphene = Myriad properties. This was achieved by Surface modification to provide uniform surface chemistry >>> more control in pore-mediators nanopatterning later

Photocatalysis with nanostructured semiconductors is one of the most widely used technologies for environmental remediation. However, the issues related with conventional photocatalysis such as fast recombination of photo-generated electron and hole pairs and poor redox abilities of the charge carriers need to be addressed to improve the properties...

In the present study, poly(ε-caprolactone) copolymers decorated with the random inclusion of thermally stable and photo-dimerizing cinnamoyl groups were synthesized for an electrically-assisted material extrusion additive manufacturing technique named melt electrowriting (MEW). The absence of thermally-induced reactions between cinnamoyl groups mai...

Per-and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)-contaminated wastewaters present major public health risks given the PFAS thermo-chemical stability and its demonstrated adverse impacts on aquatic life, extended to the entire food chain. To date, remediation of PFAS-contaminated wastewaters have been mainly undertaken with poorly cost-effective strategie...

Materials selection and engineering plays a critical role in the development of a circular economy model. Redesigning both consumer commodity goods and advanced products requires not only engineering of structures but also the choice of safe and easy to recycle materials. Circular materials must be designed to be fully recyclable or free from toxic...

Contemporary biomarker collection techniques in blood and cerebrospinal fluid have to date offered only modest clinical insights into neurologic diseases such as epilepsy and glioma. Conversely, the collection of human electroencephalography (EEG) data has long been the standard of care in these patients, enabling individualized insights for therap...

Purification of biopharmaceutical streams is essential for producing high quality therapeutic bioproducts. This work developed a novel polyacrylonitrile (PAN)-based nanofibrous membrane with strong anion exchange functionality via electrospinning. The key material functionality was obtained via RAFT copolymerization of acrylonitrile and dimethylami...

Blood apheresis technologies are crucial during blood donation and toxin removal. Current purification methods such as leukocytapheresis, erythrocytapheresis, thrombocytapheresis and plasmapheresis primarily rely on centrifugation and membrane filtration to separate blood components. Although established and scaled-up, challenges related to the sel...

Although electrospun-based membranes may be engineered as efficient platforms for the capture of biomolecules in aqueous environments, the capability of such membranes to selectively capture viruses and proteins is often limited due to poor and constrained surface affinity for molecular bonding. In order to generate more efficient electrospun-based...

This editorial provides a perspective on current knowledge and issues associated with plastic pollution with an emphasis on (i) plastics in water and wastewater processing plants, (ii) the emerging concerns for the existence and presence of nanoplastics in the environment and (iii) the need for a standardised protocol for measuring and reporting na...

Applications of membranes in water and wastewater treatment, desalination, as well as other purification processes, have become more widespread over the past few decades [...]

The recent progress in the development of membrane materials expands the applications and requirements for new, more stable, and highly effective separation materials. One of the most interesting research directions is related to membranes containing metal–organic frameworks (MOFs), and covalent organic frameworks (COFs) either in the membrane matr...

The fouling of water filtration membranes by nano/microplastic fragments can result in the decline of the water flux across membranes, however, the impact of other types of nano/microplastics on filtration processes, such as nano/micro fibres, has not been well characterised. The flexibility and high aspect ratio of nano/micro fibres could favor th...

Porous materials facilitate the efficient separation of chemicals and particulate matter by providing selectivity through structural and surface properties and are attractive as sorbent owing to their large surface area. This broad applicability of porous materials makes the integration of porous materials and microfluidic devices important in the...