広島大学 大学院 先進理工系科学研究科 分離工学研究室

Separation and purification of substances are critically important operations in fields such as the chemical industry, environment, energy, health, and society at large. In particular, in the chemical industry, fundamental improvements in separation and purification processes can lead to significant enhancements of existing production processes, enabling the development of footprint- and energy-saving technologies. Membrane-based separation of molecular mixtures (liquid solutions or gas mixtures) has attracted considerable attention as an energy- and utility-efficient separation method. Among these, porous ceramic membranes are especially promising due to their excellent thermal and chemical stability, which allows for wide-ranging applications such as separation membranes and membrane reactors. Consequently, they have garnered increasing global interest in recent years.

In our laboratory, we conduct a wide variety of studies from theoretical and engineering perspectives on the fabrication of porous ceramic membranes with pore sizes of several nanometers or less, the separation performance of the fabricated membranes, and their practical applications.

As of April 2026, the laboratory consists of four faculty members—Professor Masanori Kanezashi, Associate Professor Hiroki Nagasawa, Assistant Professor Hiroyasu Moriyama, Assistant Professor Saini Nishel—together with six doctoral students, twelve master’s students, and five fourth-year undergraduate students. The group is engaged in research on membrane fabrication, gas permeation and separation, pervaporation/vapor permeation (PV/VP) separation of liquid mixtures, reverse osmosis/nanofiltration, and membrane reactor systems.