Application of Membranes from Cellulose Acetate Nanofibers

We have to reduce our dependence on oil so that we can construct sustainable environment and society. To this end, we should utilize naturally occurring or “green polymers,” their derivatives, and wastes from food industries and so forth as resources of polymeric materials. Cellulose acetate is not only a derivative of naturally occurring raw material but also one of the promising alternatives to polymers, at the moment, produced from oil. Cellulose acetate has been utilized as membrane materials for desalination, which supplies pure drinking water from brackish or seawater. Cellulose and its derivatives, such as cellulose acetate and so forth, contain functional moieties for molecular recognition of chemicals of use to our daily life. In this chapter, the application of cellulose derivatives to membrane separation of racemic mixtures, which are required to be divided into each optically pure enantiomers in connection with diverse fields, such as pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, foods, perfumes, and so forth. In the present chapter, the author would like to reveal that the membrane form of nanofiber fabrics gave both higher permselectivity and throughput (flux).