Membranes - Page 4

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have recently refined the water desalination process, with graphene nanopores obtained using artificial intelligence.

"The ions are so tiny, and if you want to remove them, you need to either boil, evaporate, and condense the water, or push it through membranes full of very tiny pores," explained Barati Farimani, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. The current desalination and separation process is very energy and time inefficient. To combat this, Barati Farimani and his team have used artificial intelligence (AI) agents to design an improved method in a week that would likely take decades. "Ideally," he explained, "the best membrane should be one atom thick, such as graphene, a single-layer sheet."

Environmental Systems Corporation (ESC) and Evercloak have announced a new CAD$4.6 million (around USD$3.64 million) collaborative project to build up to pilot-scale commercial production of graphene-based membranes. The project will be funded by Next Generation Manufacturing Canada (NGen) from the Ministry of Innovation, Science, and Economic Development Canada.

"This is a very exciting time for us. This collaboration represents a crucial building block towards net-zero by the year 2030 by reducing energy processes for cleanrooms. We are very excited to work with Evercloak and NGen on this initiative," said Vern Solomon, Founder/ Innovator of ESC.

UK's G2O Water Technologies has reported securing its first commercial contract for the enhancement of water filtration membranes with graphene oxide.

The Company explains that the advantages of using graphene oxide lie in the enhancement of membrane performance, as it mitigates the effects of fouling one of the biggest challenges operators of membrane-based water filtration systems face. With a coating of graphene oxide, successfully developed and piloted by the company in the northwest of England in collaboration with Hydrasyst Limited, operators can improve operational efficiency, reduce energy consumption and decrease chemical usage. It is anticipated that this will extend the lifetime of the membranes, as well as significantly reduce the cost and environmental impact of water treatment.

Ora Graphene, producer of free-standing graphene membranes, has announced the closing of its CAD$3 million (around USD$2.46 million) Seed financing round. The deal was led by Ecofuel Fund along with Export Development Canada (EDC), BDC Capital and certain members of New York Angels. Existing investors TandemLaunch, and BoxOne Ventures also participated in the round. In conjunction with the financing, the company was recently awarded a Sustainable Development Technology Canada grant to explore new areas of graphene applications for its technology.

Ora has produced what it refers to as 'the largest sheets of free-standing graphene demonstrating incredible new material properties for multi-purpose commercial utilization'. GrapheneQ membranes have already been shown to significantly improve sound quality and reduce energy consumption for global manufacturers of consumer electronics, with applications being developed for exciting new markets opportunities.

Trane Technologies’ Thermo King brand has launched a new graphene-based air purification solution for buses that continuously purifies the air while the bus is in operation.

Thermo King says its Air Purification Solution has been independently tested and proven to be 98 percent effective in deactivating certain viruses, including a surrogate for the virus that causes COVID-19.

Scientists at EPFL have developed an energy-efficient graphene-based carbon dioxide filter that can extract carbon dioxide out of a gas mix, to then be either stored or converted into useful chemicals.

Professor Kumar Varoon Agrawal at EPFL's School of Basic Sciences (EPFL Valais Wallis) has led a team of chemical engineers to develop the world's thinnest filter from graphene. "Our approach was simple," says Agrawal. "We made carbon dioxide-sized holes in graphene, which allowed carbon dioxide to flow through while blocking other gases such as nitrogen, which are larger than carbon dioxide." The result is a record-high carbon dioxide-capture performance.

A team of Brown University researchers has found a way to orient the gaps that form between sheets of graphene that are stacked on top of each other. The tiny gaps, called nanochannels, are positioned by the team in a way that makes them more useful for filtering water and other liquids of nanoscale contaminants.

Structure and fabrication steps leading to vertically aligned Zr-GO/epoxy membranes. Image from article

In the last decade, a whole field has sprung up to study these spaces that form between 2D nanomaterials, said Robert Hurt, a professor in Brown’s School of Engineering and coauthor of the research. You can grow things in there, you can store things in there, and there’s this emerging field of nanofluidics where you’re using those channels to filter out some molecules while letting others go through.

Researchers led by Northwestern University engineers and Argonne National Laboratory scientists have reached new findings regarding the role of ionic interaction within graphene and water. Their insights could open the door to the design of new energy-efficient electrodes for batteries or provide the backbone ionic materials for neuromorphic computing applications.

"Every time you have interactions with ions in matter, the medium is very important. Water plays a vital role in mediating interactions between ions, molecules, and interfaces, which lead to a variety of natural and technological processes," said Monica Olvera de La Cruz, Lawyer Taylor Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, who led the research. "Yet, there is much we don't understand about how water-mediated interactions are influenced by nanoconfinement at the nanoscale."

Vanderbilt engineers recently designed a simple defect-sealing technique to correct variations in pore size in graphene membranes. The researchers reported a breakthrough in scalable fabrication of graphene membranes with a sealing technology that corrects variations in the pore size so they remain small enough to trap salt ions and small molecules but allow water to pass.

One of the most complex engineering challenges when making membranes so thin is to maintain integrity in the uniformity of the pores, which requires drilling atomically precise holes in a one-atom thick sheet of carbon atoms. A single large hole can cause high leakage and compromise membrane performance, said Piran Kidambi, assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering.

Chinese researchers from AECC Beijing Institute of Aeronautical Materials (AECC BIAM) have developed a new type of face mask with graphene material on the key filter layer. The researchers have reportedly put a graphene-polypropylene material on the melt-blown fabric, which is the key filter layer of masks.

The graphene material is said to help the masks features stronger antibacterial properties, better air permeability and enhanced durability. The graphene face mask makes use of the nanoknife effect of the graphene material to destroy the cell wall of bacteria.