in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com).To support a sustainable industrial growth, chemical engineering today faces a crucial challenge of meeting the increasing demand for materials and energy. One possible solution is to decrease the equipment size/productivity ratio, energy consumption, and waste generation via process integration and optimization. This review focuses on the integration of electrodialysis with traditional unit operations and other membrane separations. Such integrations, due to their diversity and practicability, can be versatile tools to meet specific needs from chemical, biochemical, food, and pharmaceutical industries.

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Electrodialysis with bipolar membranes (EDBM) is a kind of technology that integrates solvent and salt dissociation. It can realize salt conversion without second salt pollution or provide H+ and OH-/alkoxide ions in situ without salt introduction. Thus, it inherently possesses economical and environmental benefits. Moreover, its technological compatibility gives rise to new functions when it couples with other technologies, such as complexion, ion exchange, extraction, and adsorption. In view of the above peculiarities, EDBM has found many interesting applications in chemistry, food processing, biochemical industries, and environmental protection. However, its development has been restricted by such factors as lack of recognition of its contribution to industrial ecology, high membrane cost, insufficient research investment, and scarce operation experience. This paper compiles an introduction to this technology from the perspective of industrial ecology and conducts an extensive examination into EDBM applications. Its purpose is to gather synergic strength from academia, industry, and government to perfect EDBM for sustainable development.

Gas-sensing applications commonly use nanomaterials (NMs) because of their unique physicochemical properties, including a high surface-to-volume ratio, enormous number of active sites, controllable morphology, and potential for miniaturisation.

Optimising the supported modes of atom or ion dispersal onto substrates, to synchronously integrate high reactivity and robust stability in catalytic conversion, is an important yet challenging area of research. Here, theoretical calculations first show that three-coordinated copper (Cu) sites have higher activity than four-, two- and one-coordinated sites. A site-selective etching method is then introduced to prepare a stacked-nanosheet metal–organic framework (MOF, CASFZU-1)-based catalyst with precisely controlled coordination number sites on its surface. The turnover frequency value of CASFZU-1 with three-coordinated Cu sites, for cycloaddition reaction of CO 2 with epoxides, greatly exceed those of other catalysts reported to date. Five successive catalytic cycles reveal the superior stability of CASFZU-1 in the stacked-nanosheet structure. This study could form a basis for the rational design and construction of highly efficient and robust catalysts in the field of single-atom or ion catalysis.

Graphene quantum dots (GQDs) have been widely used as fluorescence probes to detect metal ions with satisfactory selectivity. However, the diverse chemical structures of GQDs lead to selectivity for multiple metal ions, and this can lead to trouble in the interpretation of selectivity due to the lack of an in depth and systematic analysis. Herein, bare GQDs were synthesized by oxidizing carbon black with nitric acid and used as fluorescent probes to detect metal ions. We found that the specific ability of GQDs to recognize ferric ions relates to the acidity of the medium. Specifically, we demonstrated that the coordination between GQDs and Fe is regulated by the pH of the aqueous GQDs solution. Dissociative Fe can coordinate with the hydroxyl groups on the surface of the GQDs to form aggregates (such as iron hydroxide), which induces fluorescence quenching. A satisfactory selectivity for Fe ions was achieved under relatively acidic conditions; this is because of the extremely small K of ferric hydroxide compared to those of other common metal hydroxides. To directly survey the key parameter for Fe ion specificity, we performed the detection experiment in an environment free of interference from the buffer solution, noninherent groups, and other complex factors. This study will help researchers understand the selectivity mechanisms of GQDs as fluorescence probes for metal ions, which could guide the design of other GQD-based sensor platforms.

To detect biomarkers from human exhalation, air flow dynamics on the nanoparticle surface were explored by a surface‐enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) sensor. A hollow Co‐Ni layered double hydroxide (LDH) nanocage on Ag nanowires (Ag@LDH) was prepared. Ag nanowires provided amplified Raman signals for trace determination; hollow LDH nanocages served as the gaseous confinement cavity to improve capture and adsorption of gaseous analytes. The Raman intensity and logarithmic analyte concentration exhibit an approximately linear relationship; the detection limit of SERS sensors for aldehyde is 1.9×10−9 v/v (1.9 ppb). Various aldehydes in mixed mimetic gas are distinguished by Raman spectra statistical analysis assisted by multivariate methods, including principal component analysis and hierarchical cluster analysis. The information was recorded in a barcode, which can be used for the design and development of a desktop SERS sensor analysis system for large‐scale lung cancer detection.

Redesigning heterogeneous catalysts so that they can simultaneously integrate the efficiency and durability under reaction environments with respect to gas fuel production, such as hydrogen (H2), oxygen (O2), or carbon monoxide (CO), has proven challenging. In this work, we report the successful template-assisted printing-based assembly of platinum (Pt) nanoparticles (NPs) into striped-pattern (SP) superlattices to produce H2. In comparison to drop-casting flat Pt NPs films, SP superlattices lead to higher mass transference and smaller bubble stretch force, representing a general strategy to improve the efficiency and durability of pre-existed Pt catalysts for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), as well as higher current densities than commercial Pt/C, Pt NP films, and many of the other Pt-based or non-Pt-based HER catalysts reported in the literature. The generic nature of template-assisted printing leads to flexibility in the composition, size, and shape of the constituent NPs or molecules, and thus extends such an accelerated technique for producing the oxygen evolution reaction and electrochemical reduction of CO2 to CO.