We are happy to start the year with good news: our 2nd year Ph.D. Jordan just published his first article at the Journal of Applied Polymer Science (Wiley) with the title:

,,Membrane Polymers for the Pervaporative Separation of Polar Organics: Methanol and Acetonitrile”.

This study was focused primarily on exploring polymer membranes for the pervaporative separation of challenging methanol–acetonitrile mixtures. Also, it provided a detailed insight into membrane plasticization using broadband dielectric spectroscopy and liquid sorption measurements.

Congratulations!

(Partial) Group photo of our researcher group at this year’s Department Christmas party.

It’s always important to have a good time in this period of the year. 🙂

On the 9th of December, our group was visited by two professors: prof S. Khan and prof M. Karamad from the Simon Fraser University, Vancouver (Canada).

The aim of their visit was to discuss options for a possible future cooperation in the fields of: Surface and Interfacial Engineering; Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage (CCUS) and Material Science.

Thank you for your visit!

We are happy to share that our grant (GAČR proposal ,, Tailoring the interfacial properties of bio-inspired fluorine-free hydrophobic membranes for improved separation of gases and liquids ” got accepted for funding.

The main investigator of the project is prof. Karel Friess.

This project will run from 2026 until 2028.

As stated in the title, our goal is to develop a green material with super hydrophobic properties – all this by avoiding the use of polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).

We are happy to share, that our master student Tomáš Mathauser won the third price at the Student Researcher Conference (SVK) hosted by our University.

In his work, he presented results about his succesfully synthetised membranes containing magnetic MOF particles for air separation.

Additionally, our former student Adéla Ulrichová won a second place price presenting her bachelor thesis finished in our lab. In the thesis, she worked on covalently bonding MOFs with polymer side chains and studied its effect on various properties with main focus on CO2 sorption.

Congratulations Tomáš and Adéla!

Karel and Dániel visited the group of prof. M. Kaspereit of the Advanced Seperation Processes at the Institute of Separation Science and Technology, FAU Nürnberg-Erlangen.

Our final project meeting was aimed to sum up and reflect the progress that was made during our joint project, and also brainstorming about the future steps in order to keep this international bilateral cooperation going actively.

We were also warmly welcomed by the head of the Institute prof. M. Thommes, who also invited us for a guided lab tour over the Institute.

This succesful BTHA project was coordinated by two Ph.D. students: Johannes Wieczorek from Germany and Dániel Gardenö from our group.

Thank you for such an opportunity.

Dániel recently came back from his two month Erasmus stay at the University of Naples Federico II (UNINA), Italy.

He further expanded the stable base of the cooperation between our group and the group of prof. G. Mensitieri and prof. G. Scherillo.

During his stay, he focused mostly on testing his 2D carbon-based composite membranes, combining the fields of transport modelling and material engineering.

The measured results will be included in his Ph.D. thesis and soon published in high-impact scientific journals.

Also, during a quick weekend trip, he had the chance to visit our researcher partners (Jansen Group) at ITM-CNR in Calabria.

Grazie mile ragazzi!

An article by our group just got published at the Journal of Chemical Engineering Advances.

It’s called ,,Demonstrating the Potential of Versatile Single-crystal Spinel Magnetic CoFe2O4-Ti3C2Tx MXene-based Hybrid Platforms for Multifaceted Nano-level Separations in Gas and Liquid Phases” and is motivated towards exploring MXenes-based hybrid platforms for multifaceted nano-level separations in gas and liquid Phases.

Link for the article: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ceja.2025.100937

On Friday, October 24th, Karel, at the invitation of Marcel Schmengler and Giuseppe Genduso, visited the Evonik Fibres GmbH branch in Schörfling am Attersee.

After a discussion and presentation in which Karel introduced Membranegroup.cz and its recent results, he also visited the production area and inspected the production of hollow fibres, and the finalization of modules.

An excellent experience for understanding the complexity of the individual process steps for manufacturing HF modules.

Gentlemen, thank you very much.