Ceramic Ultra-Filters are Environment, Budget Friendly

CONTACT: Lia Unrau

PHONE: (713)
831-4793

E-MAIL: unrau@rice.edu

CERAMIC ULTRA-FILTERS ARE ENVIRONMENT, BUDGET
FRIENDLY

Researchers at Rice have created an
ultra-porous ceramic filter with pores about 10-50 nanometers in size that may
prove useful to industries ranging from hazardous waste treatment to milk
sterilization.

The research will be presented at the 215th national meeting of
the American Chemical Society in Dallas.

The material, an environmentally benign aluminum ceramic
developed by Rice chemist and materials scientist Andrew Barron, is produced
using only water as a solvent, and is extremely inexpensive compared to other
ceramics. Standard processes for creating ceramic filters are difficult to
control, use toxic solvents and it is extremely difficult to produce small pore
sizes. Pore size of existing filters ranges from .1-1 micrometer.

Says co-author and Rice environmental engineer Mark Wiesner, “This material is well suited to making membranes with very narrow pore size
distributions and, with relatively little effort, pores that are quite small
compared with conventional methods.” Barron and Wiesner will work to improve
their system to reduce the film thickness and to decrease the size of the pores
to 1-2 nm, which would allow them to filter viruses. They are currently studying
properties of the material, including permeability and surface chemistry and
have shown that permeabilities are similar to those of currently marketed
membranes. The filters may have applications in the biomedical separations and
chemical recovery industries as well.

The researchers have filed for patents on this
technology.

###