Study demonstrates AI’s usefulness toward developing water purification membranes with novel properties

07-Dec-2022

Even the best water filters let some things through, but designing improved materials and then testing them is time consuming and difficult. Now, researchers in ACS Central Science report that artificial intelligence (AI) could speed up the development of promising materials. In a ...

more

Olivier Gröninger is improving the drinking water supply for people in rural areas of South America with his Openversum project

03-Nov-2022

'There are still two billion people in the world without access to clean drinking water,' says Olivier Gröninger, a postdoc in Professor Wendelin Stark’s group at ETH Zurich. These are the people whom the chemical engineer wants to help. Over the past five years, he has developed an inexpensive ...

more

Novel membrane shows high filtering effects

22-Aug-2022

Dispersion paints are mostly used in households for painting walls and ceilings. An interdisciplinary research team from the University of Bayreuth has now analysed the chemical composition of two typical dispersion paints and discovered a large number of solid particles in them which are only a ...

more

A fast, efficient, selective membrane for purifying saltwater

16-May-2022

Water scarcity is a growing problem around the world. Desalination of seawater is an established method to produce drinkable water but comes with huge energy costs. For the first time, researchers use fluorine-based nanostructures to successfully filter salt from water. Compared to current ...

more

First laser-drilled filter for the filtration of microplastics from wastewater

05-Apr-2022

Until now, wastewater treatment plants have not been able to sufficiently filter out tiny microplastics in wastewater, but this could soon change: The first laser-drilled microplastic filter is being tested in a wastewater treatment plant. It contains sheets with extremely small holes just 10 ...

more

Synthetic polymer membranes mimic the highly selective properties of biological cell membranes

09-Sep-2021

A team of scientists at the Tufts University School of Engineering has developed a new filtering technology inspired by biology that could help curb a drinking water-related disease that affects tens of millions of people worldwide and potentially improve environmental remediation, industrial and ...

more

New material can be reused many times over

18-Jun-2021

Researchers at TU Bergakademie Freiberg developed an innovative material from a cultured marine sponge. When the fibers of the sponge react with a copper-containing ammonia solution, such as that found in the electronics industry, the mineral atacamite is formed. This mineral, which occurs only ...

more

Novel filter systems made from composite materials

05-May-2021

Removing pathogens from drinking water is especially difficult when the germs are too tiny to be caught by conventional filters. Researchers at Empa and Eawag are developing new materials and processes to free water from pathogenic microorganisms such as viruses Water is life, biology teaches us. ...

more

Highly efficient CO2 capture from air using tissue-fixed amines

26-Apr-2021

Protecting the global climate is an undertaking that presents both industry and society with a major task. It will not be possible to achieve the climate targets simply by limiting global emissions, by saving carbon dioxide (CO2). This is because there will continue to be unavoidable CO2 ...

more

Membrane massively reduces volumes of waste

01-Oct-2020

The nuclear accident in Fukushima remains etched into people's memories. It was a catastrophe that caused huge amounts of radioactively contaminated water to be released, which the operators of the nuclear power plant subsequently had to clean up. One of the methods they used was reverse osmosis ...

more