Muhammad Usman Farid

• Research Assistant Professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Photothermal‐catalytic (PTC) process is a promising way to produce freshwater and clean hydrogen by integrating solar‐driven desalination and water splitting. However, efficient solar spectrum utilization coupled with effective mass and thermal management poses key challenges in developing multifunctional PTC systems. Here, a highly stable hydrogel...

Sub-10 µm microplastics (MPs) in aquatic environments pose significant ecological and health risks due to their mobility and potential to carry harmful microcontaminants. Our effluent analysis from a Hong Kong Sewage Treatment Works shows that traditional treatment often fails to effectively remove these MPs. These small-sized MPs are commonly negl...

Omniphobic membranes, due to their exceptional properties, have drawn significant attention for overcoming the bottleneck in membrane distillation (MD) technology. This study demonstrates an innovative method for fabricating an omniphobic membrane that is simple and facile compared to other methods such as wet/dry etching and photolithography. The...

Anion exchange membrane water electrolysis (AEMWE) has seen rapid advancements over the past decade due to its promising role in green hydrogen production. Ensuring long-term functionality is as crucial as optimizing performance to achieve commercial viability and industrial integration. However, few studies have systematically discussed the degrad...

Feedwater heating represents a pivotal and energy-intensive step in membrane distillation (MD), contributing significantly to the total energy costs. Thus, elevating the thermal efficiency of the MD process is vital for its broader energy optimization. Recent years have witnessed an uptick in research targeting the enhancement of thermal efficiency...

The emergence of nano innovations in membrane distillation (MD) has garnered increasing scientific interest. This enables the exploration of state‐of‐the‐art nano‐enabled MD membranes with desirable properties, which significantly improve the efficiency and reliability of the MD process and open up opportunities for achieving a sustainable water‐en...

Since the discovery of nanobubbles (NBs) in 1994, NBs have been attracting growing attention for their fascinating properties and have been studied for application in various environmental fields, including water and wastewater treatment. However, despite the intensive research efforts on NBs’ fundamental properties, especially in the past five yea...

The use of reverse osmosis (RO) for water reclamation has become an essential part of the water supply owing to the ever-increasing water demand and the utmost performance of the RO membranes. Despite the global RO implementation, its inferior rejection against low molecular weight contaminants of emerging concerns (CECs) (i.e., N-nitrosodimethylam...

The apparel consumer, one of the vital stakeholders in the apparel supply chain, has a significant role to play in moving the clothing industry in a sustainable direction. From purchasing and care practice to donation and disposal, every step of their decisions impacts the environment. Various internal and external variables influence those decisio...

Membrane bioreactors (MBRs) have been well established as an advanced wastewater treatment technology that combines activated sludge with a pressure-driven membrane separation process. They have been widely applied in municipal and industrial wastewater treatment systems due to their advantages over conventional activated sludge systems. However, M...

The discharge of untreated effluent containing excessive pharmaceutical chemicals (PCs) from aquaculture farms has caused several negative effects on the aquatic ecosystems. Herein, we used a hybrid system based on two emerging technologies, namely forward osmosis (FO) and nanobubbles (NBs), as an energy-efficient, sustainable, and effective altern...

In this study, we report the use of nanobubbles (NBs) as a simple and facile approach to effectively delay scaling in membrane distillation (MD) during the treatment of highly saline feed (100 g L⁻¹). Unlike conventional gas bubbling in MD for improving the hydrodynamic flow conditions in the feed channel, here we generated air NBs with an average...

The design and fabrication of omniphobic and Janus membranes has been already established and reported in the literature. However, the reports on their fouling and wetting performance in membrane distillation (MD) are contradicting, mainly due to a lack of comparable membrane design and operating feed conditions. In this study, we systematically ev...

Herein, we demonstrate the desalination performance of a solar-driven membrane distillation (MD) process, where upon light illumination, a highly localized heating of plasmonic titanium nitride nanoparticles (TiN NPs) immobilized on a hydrophobic membrane provides the thermal driving force for the MD operation. The engineered TiN photothermal membr...

This study presents an experimental demonstration of a highly efficient solar-driven interfacial evaporation system for potable water production. The engineered evaporation system consist of a photothermal structure (plasmonic titanium nitride nanoparticles (TiN NPs) coated on a hydrophilic porous membrane), and a thermally insulating nano silica a...

Vacuum membrane distillation (VMD) has been gaining attention as a cost-competitive membrane separation technology due to its advantages, which include low conductive heat loss and reduced mass transfer resistance. Vacuum multi-effect membrane distillation (V-MEMD) is an advanced hybrid configuration that achieves additional system enhancements, su...

A hierarchically assembled superomniphobic membrane with three levels of reentrant structure was designed and fabricated to enable effective treatment of low surface tension, hypersaline oily wastewaters using direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD). The overall structure is a combination of macro corrugations obtained by surface imprinting, wi...

The rising consumption of pharmaceuticals, personal care products, and endocrine disruptive compounds for healthcare purposes and improving living standards has resulted in the widespread occurrence of organic micropollutants (MPs) in water and wastewater. Conventional water/wastewater treatment plants are faced with inherent limitations in tacklin...

In this work, a bench scale study was designed to investigate the removal of zinc (Zn²⁺) and regeneration efficiencies of functionalized-MWCNT (f-MWCNT) membranes. The f-MWCNTs were incorporated into polyvinylchloride (PVC) hollow fiber membranes (HFMs), which acted as a substrate and a barrier for MWCNTs leaching to water. The results revealed tha...

In an attempt to advance GO-based environmental applications, herein we probed the anti-biofouling properties and mechanisms of graphene oxide (GO) surface coating. A flexible and mechanically stable GO membrane was fabricated using vacuum filtration technique and its ability to inactivate bacterial growth and subsequent biofilm formation was inves...

We have reported on the potential use of membrane distillation (MD) to remove emerging pollutants from wastewater as an alternative to other biological and chemical treatments. For every successful application of MD, the fouling and scaling associated with membrane wetting must be reduced to minimize the deterioration in performance. Here, we have...

While the cytotoxicity of graphene oxide (GO) has been well established, its bactericidal mechanism, however has yet to be elucidated to advance GO-based biomedical and environmental applications. In an attempt to better understand the bactericidal action of GO, herein we studied the interactions of GO with Gram-negative Escherichia coli and Gram-p...

Recovering the adsorption capacity of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) is of importance to the sustainable use of MWCNT for the adsorption of pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCP). In this study, different regeneration approaches, including chemical desorption, sonication, and thermal treatment were compared for their efficiencies...

To meet the challenges of global oil spills and oil-water contamination, the development of a low-cost and reusable sorbents with good hydrophobicity and oleophilic nature is crucial. In this study, functionalized carbon nanotubes (CNTs) were wrapped in polystyrene (PS) polymer (PS-CNTs) and electrospun to create an effective and rigid sorbent for...