Nanotechnology and water

More than one third of the world population (2,5 milliard people) doesn’t have safe drinking water. Besides this fact, development- and industry country’s wrestle with big shortages of drink- and process water and of irrigation water for agriculture. Nanotechnology can diminish these deficits by converting surface water, seawater and garbage water in good quality water.

Expected technology developments
By making drink water membranes are used to dispose the water of flowing dust, micro-organism and organic material. In general that’s about particles bigger than 15 nanometer. More fine membranes are used to desalt seawater, for example on board of ships. This is all existing technology. Thanks to nanotechnology it’s possible to make membranes with pores with exactly the same size, so can in stead of 99, 100 percent of all micro-organism be stopped. That saves an extra treatment with a disinfection means. With nano preciseness you can make membranes with more pores per square meter. Therefore is possible to clear more water per square meter membrane. There is also less energy necessary to desalt seawater.

Finally you can make membranes that can better resist the ‘turnback’ of the water stream thanks to nanotechnology. That’s necessary to rinse out the membranes, but it also causes an deposit on the ultra thin membranes. More solid membranes cause a longer lifespan and less costs.

At the MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology there are some research groups involved in this subject. These groups are: PoF, PCF, TST, BIOS, MTG and AAMP. The MESA+ spin-off companies Micronit and Capilix also work in this area.

Water

Nanometer-resolved collective micromeniscus oscillations through optical diffraction

A paper was published in Physical Review Letters (99, 214501 (2007)) in which optical diffraction was used to show that ultrasound can make a field of liquid-gas menisci oscillate. ... read more

Micro-fuelcell based on solid-acid electrolytes

The goal of this micro-fuelcell project is to study about the possibility of an innovative micro machined fuel cell that works within an intermediate temperature range (~ between 150°C and 250°C). ... read more