Thursday, July 5, 2018

Rice University Gets $1.7M DOE Funding For Desalination Technology

Houston-based Rice University says that the Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded a team at the school with a $1.7M grant, for work on solar desalination technology. Rice said last week that the funding will go towards a light-harvesting membrane, developed at its Center for Nanotechnology Enabled Water Treatment (NEWT), which uses nanoparticles and sunlight to treat water. Rice says the project was one of 14 projects which were funded in June through a special Solar Deslination program being run by the DOE. The self-heating membrane, which uses nanoparticles to convert sunlight into heat, could help reduce the normally energy intensive process of desalination. Researchers said its current prototypes can desalinate water at a rate of up to 6 liters per hour per square meter of light-harvesting membrane.