NSF Nanosystems Engineering Research Center for Nantechnology Enabled Water Treatment Systems (NEWT)

标题：纳米系统工程研究中心的纳米技术使水处理。获得安全的饮用水是地球上所有生命的基本需要。这是一个与公共健康、能源生产和可持续发展相关的重大挑战。这不仅仅是发展中国家的需要。超过4000万美国人没有接入市政供水系统，他们依赖于井水的质量。这些水的质量因地区而异，气候变化加剧了淡水的稀缺。该中心研究产生的技术将扩大获得各种潜在来源(如井水地下水、咸水、微咸水或再生工业水)的清洁饮用水的途径。将设计的模块化系统将解决从家庭规模到社区到偏远城镇的饮用水问题。这些技术还将被应用于帮助人们在自然灾害期间获得饮用水。除了饮用水，该中心还将通过帮助提高水的净化质量以供重复使用和循环使用，从而改善石油和天然气勘探和生产作业的水“足迹”。这些工业用水的环境影响将得到改善，从而节约能源和水资源。在该中心接受培训的学生将拥有多学科、基于团队的研究经验，拥有将他们的研究转化为缺乏安全清洁水源的广泛利益相关者(例如，工业组织、政府组织和公民)所需的技能。ERC由莱斯大学领导，合作伙伴包括亚利桑那州立大学、德克萨斯大学埃尔帕索分校和耶鲁大学。该中心使用纳米技术将使多功能纳米材料的设计和制造能够吸附各种各样的污染物，包括氧阴离子、总溶解固体、硝酸盐、盐、有机物、污垢、烫金剂、病毒和微生物。这些纳米材料将被固定在包装成系统模块的膜中。模块的使用提供了目标污染物(S)和最终用途应用能力或输送水价规模的灵活性。新型光子、电子、催化和磁性工程纳米材料(ENM)将引入新的方法，将水处理从大型的化学和能源密集型过程转变为紧凑的物理和催化系统。这些创新将使多个利益攸关方受益，从农村社区和遭受自然灾害的地点到水力压裂油气地点，在这些地点，采出水的再利用将对区域环境的影响降至最低。该中心的创新技术建立在严谨的基础研究基础上。组件技术包括：使用ENM进行表面自清洁和生物膜控制的耐污染高渗透膜；使用高导电性和选择性电极的电容去离子来去除烫伤物(二价离子)；顺磁纳米吸附剂的快速磁分离，以便于重复使用；支持纳米光子学的直接太阳能膜蒸馏，用于低能海水淡化；使用纳米催化剂进行消毒和高级氧化/还原；以及模板辅助纳米结晶来控制结垢。关于ENM与水污染物和基质材料相互作用的基础研究；固定、支持或回收ENM的集成单元流程；以及在试验台上展示的设计安全性，将确保中心的系统具有弹性、经济和高效。

Title: A Nanosystems Engineering Research Center for Nanotechnology Enabled Water Treatment.Access to safe drinking water is a basic need for all life on the planet. It is a grand challenge linked to public health, energy production, and sustainable development. This is not just a need in the developing world. Over 40 million Americans are not connected to a municipal water system and rely on the quality of the water available from wells. The quality of this water varies with location and climate change exacerbates fresh water scarcity. The technologies that result from the research of this center will broaden access to clean drinking water with a variety of potential sources (e.g. groundwater from wells, salt water, brackish water, or recycled industrial water). The modular systems that will be designed will address drinking water from the scale of a household, to a neighborhood to a remote town. These technologies will also find application to help people get drinking water during natural disasters. In addition to drinking water, the Center will improve the water "footprint" of oil and gas exploration and production operations by helping to increase the quality of water cleanup for reuse and recycle. The environmental impact of water use in these industrial settings will be improved, saving energy and water resources. Students trained in this Center will have a multidisciplinary, team-based research experience with the skills needed to translate their research to a broad set of stakeholders (e.g., industrial organizations, governmental organizations, and citizens) that lack a secure source of clean water.The ERC is led by Rice University, with partners at Arizona State University, University of Texas-El Paso and Yale University. The Center's use of nanotechnology will allow the design and manufacture of multifunctional nanomaterials to adsorb a wide variety of pollutants including oxo-anions, total dissolved solids, nitrates, salts, organics, foulants, scalants, viruses and microbes. These nanomaterials will be immobilized in membranes that are packaged into system modules. The use of modules offers flexibility of targeted pollutant(s) and end-use application capacity or scale of delivered water rate. Novel photonic, electronic, catalytic, and magnetic engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) will introduce new approaches to transform water treatment from a large, chemical- and energy-intensive process toward compact physical and catalytic systems. These innovations will benefit multiple stakeholders, from rural communities and locations hit by natural disasters to hydraulic fracturing oil and gas sites, where reuse of produced waters minimizes regional environmental impacts. The Center's innovative technologies are founded on rigorous basic research. Component technologies include fouling-resistant, high-permeability membranes that use ENMs for surface self-cleaning and biofilm control; capacitive deionization with highly conductive and selective electrodes to remove scalants (divalent ions); rapid magnetic separation of paramagnetic nanosorbents for easy reuse; nanophotonics-enabled direct solar membrane distillation for low-energy desalination; disinfection and advanced oxidation/reduction using nanocatalysts; and template-assisted nanocrystallization for scaling control. Fundamental research on ENM interactions with water pollutants and substrate materials; integrated unit processes that immobilize, support, or recover ENMs; and safety by design demonstrated in testbeds will ensure that the Center's systems are resilient, economical, and highly efficient.