Membrane & Separation Technology News articles from January 2004

Membrane & Separation Technology News archives from January 2004

YEAR IN REVIEW: Looking Ahead, Looking Back.
January 1, 2004... Despite a turbulent year that included corporate restructuring, personnel cuts, divestitures, discontinued operations and continued consolidation, most membrane industry players posted double-digit growth over 2002. Capital expenditures for...

REVERSE OSMOSIS: Vertex Expanding Product Range.
January 1, 2004... Vertex Research has released a new range of reverse osmosis systems for the pharmaceutical industry, a series of RO units for residential and light industrial applications, and a next generation of PES ultrafilters for water treatment....

Oil Fields as Water Source?
January 1, 2004... Engineers from AERA Energy, California's largest oil and gas producer, and environmental consulting firm Kennedy-Jenks are examining the potential of reverse osmosis for reclaiming oil field water for reuse in agriculture. The purification...

GAS SEPARATION: Small-Pores Enhance Sieving.
January 1, 2004... A team of ORNL (Oak Ridge National Laboratory) scientists has patented a method for fabricating fine-pored inorganic membranes by progressively reducing pore size following conventional formation by depositing one or more layers of an inorganic...

Rocket Fuel from Mars' Atmosphere.
January 1, 2004... Scientists from Lockheed and the Colorado School of Mines are working on a NASA-funded membrane project for producing propellants from the almost pure carbon dioxide Martian atmosphere. By using membrane technology to extract CO2, the gas could...

MEMBRANE REACTORS: Aeration Key to Space Wastewater Recycling.
January 1, 2004... Through the research efforts of scientists at Texas Tech University, NASA has been investigating the suitability of membrane-aerated bioreactors for use in treating wastewaters generated during space missions. Speaking at Business...

First FasPac Slated for Reclamation.
January 1, 2004... USFilter will install its first FastPac Immersed Membrane Bioreactor plant at the Woods Valley Ranch Water Reclamation facility in Valley Center, CA. The Woods Valley Ranch area is a residential development site adjacent to the environmentally...

ELECTROCHEMICAL: High Temp Group Reports Results.
January 1, 2004... At its October meeting, government, industry, and university researchers from the High Temperature Membrane Working Group of the DOE's Hydrogen, Fuel Cells, & Infrastructure Technologies Program reported on the current status, challenges, R&D...

Ion Power Researching Ionomer Recycling.
January 1, 2004... Ion Power, Inc. has been awarded a DOE contract for researching the recycling of MEAs including the recovery and reuse of membrane materials. The raw materials used in MEAs, platinum catalysts and fluoropolymers, are known as major cost...

MEMBRANE CHROMATOGRAPHY: Q Capsule Accelerates Antisense Processing.
January 1, 2004... In recent research, Pall Corp.'s membrane-based Mustang chromatography capsules have shown a tenfold increase in antisense drug production speeds compared to standard column chromatography. Antisense drugs are a class of potent new...

Spin Column Increases Detection.
January 1, 2004... Researchers at Harvard NIEHS Center Proteomics Facility have found that sample fractionation using Vivapure spin columns, based on membrane adsorber technology, enables the detection of three times as many protein spots on 2D-PAGE gels when...

MEMBRANE SENSORS: Remote Network Could Collect Biohazard Data.
January 1, 2004... Researchers from Cornell University and the Wadsworth Center of New York State's Department of Health hope to create tiny, "self- configuring" sensors that could be deployed as a network in disaster areas, sending back vital information to save...

INDUSTRY NEWS: India Looks to Solar Water Systems.
January 1, 2004... During December's two-day Rotary International conference on water management, Indian President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam called on his nation to harness solar energy to power reverse osmosis drinking water production to offset the emerging water...

DOE Funding Renewable Projects.
January 1, 2004... DOE recently issued its fiscal year 2004 solicitation for its SBIR-Small Business Innovation Research and SBTT-Small Business Technology Transfer programs. Several grants are being offered through DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable...

Perth Industry to Use Reclaimed Water.
January 1, 2004... Australia's new Kwinana Water Reclamation Plant is installing a USFilter Memcor Continuous Microfiltration-Submerged (CMF-S) system that will purify wastewater from an existing treatment plant and supply the high quality reclaimed water to key...

Briefly Noted:.
January 1, 2004... Environmental Resource Recovery Group, LLC (Nortonville, KS) has contracted with King County, Washington's Department of Natural Resources and Parks to study the feasibility of anaerobic digesters and subsequent membrane water treatment for...

CALENDAR.
January 1, 2004... February 17-20, 16th SMAGUA, International Water Exhibition and 6th Environment Exhibition, Zaragoza, Spain. Contact: Alarcon &Harris, Communication and Marketing Consultants, Numaica, 2, 28039 Madrid, Spain; Tel. +34 (91) 459 93 59; Fax +34...

INDUSTRY INSIGHT: Sol Gel Separators for Lithium-Based Batteries.
January 1, 2004... By Steven A. Carlson, President & CEO, Optodot Corp., 214 Lincoln St., Suite 305, Allston, MA 02134 The thickness of separator membranes for lithium-based batteries needs to be thinner than 20 microns to increase the energy density and the...

Background.
January 1, 2004... Improved lithium-based rechargeable batteries are needed for portable applications such as wireless mobile computer and for hybrid electric vehicles. Separators are a major area for making the cost and performance improvements needed in lithium...

Process Development.
January 1, 2004... To make a more cost effective thin separator for lithium batteries, Optodot has taken a manufacturing approach of high speed coating of a metal oxide sol gel coating on a smooth substrate followed by a delamination step to provide the free-...

Polymer Gel Separators.
January 1, 2004... Typical properties of 11-micron thick polymer sol gel separators made on 60-inch wide production coating machine are shown in the table. Sol gel separators at other thicknesses in the range of 6 to 11 microns have similar properties. These...

Conclusion.
January 1, 2004... The manufacturability of sol gel battery separators by a patented coating and delamination process was investigated on large production equipment and found to be capable of producing strong, flexible, and very uniform separator membranes at...