Dear Colleagues,

We are delighted to announce a forthcoming Special Issue focusing on “Liquid–Liquid, Oil–Water Energy Efficient Separations” with Dr. Gibum Kwon serving as the Guest Editor. It is our pleasure to invite you to submit your original contributions to this Special Issue.

Liquid–liquid separation is at the cornerstone of clean water supply due to the ever-increasing water pollution from oil exploitation activities, as well as the massive production of wastewater in industrial processes including in pharmaceutical, mining, metallurgical, paper-making, food, and textile production.

Conventional methodologies such as centrifugation, ultrasonic separation, coagulation, distillation, biological treatment, absorbents, and skimmers have been utilized as separation technologies by comprehensively combining chemical and physical approaches. However, these methodologies are limited by their insufficient separation efficiency, secondary pollution, and high energy consumption.

Membrane-based separation of oil–water mixtures is favored over these conventional methodologies as they require no regeneration of spent media, chemical additives, and thermal inputs. Among them, high-pressure membranes (e.g., reverse osmosis, ultrafiltration) and the membranes with wettability remain the most widely used in liquid separations. However, challenges such as permeability-selectivity trade-off, chemical and mechanical robustness, upscaling limitations, susceptibility to fouling, and the resulting increased operation costs have partly counterbalanced their advantages.

Therefore, the resolution of current challenges and development of novel methodologies by the scientific society is indispensable to the provision of clean water in the future. This Special Issue is intended to act as a forum to present the latest developments and opportunities in the area of liquid–liquid separation. We invite the scientific community to contribute original research articles and review papers outlining the novel findings and recent developments in liquid–liquid separation. The topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Membranes for separation of immiscible liquids such as an oil–water mixture
• Desalination of oily saline wastewater
• Novel membrane-based technologies for miscible liquid separations
• Membranes with special functionalities (e.g., photocatalysis, wettability, fouling resistant)

Dr. Gibum Kwon
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Energies is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• membranes
• oil–water separation
• miscible liquid separation
• desalination
• wastewater remediation