Environmental benefits/risks of nanotech topic of event

Envirnomental benefits/risks of nanotech topic of event
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BY B.J. ALMOND
Rice News Staff

Whether new nanotechnologies that can help clean up the environment might also harm it will be addressed during a free workshop at Rice Dec. 10.

Titled ”Nanotechnology and Environment: An Examination of the Potential Benefits and Perils of an Emerging Technology,” the workshop is open to the public as well as to Rice students, faculty and staff.

”Emerging technologies present new opportunities for improving the human condition, but they also have the potential for unforeseen negative environmental consequences,” said Mark Wiesner, director of Rice’s Energy and Environmental Systems Institute (EESI), which is co-sponsoring the workshop with the Office for Science and Technology of the French Embassy USA.

Wiesner cites Freon as an example. Freon was hailed as an important advance in refrigeration because it was nontoxic and nonflammable. It replaced highly toxic compounds that had caused numerous accidental deaths from their use in home refrigerators. But decades later, scientists discovered that chlorofluorocarbons such as Freon endangered Earth’s ozone layer.

”Nanotechnologies hold great promise for creating new means of detecting pollutants, cleaning polluted waste streams, recovering materials before they become wastes and expanding available resources,” said Wiesner, who also is a professor of civil and environmental engineering and chemical engineering. ”But the nanotechnology industry is just now emerging, so we need to question whether it presents new environmental challenges so that the products of nanochemistry do not become dangerous environmental pollutants.”

Rice is hosting the workshop in affiliation with its new Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology, one of six major nanoscale science and engineering centers recently announced by the National Science Foundation and the first to focus on applications of nanoscience to biology and the environment. Wiesner leads the center’s environmental research.

Nanotechnologies involve materials that are one-billionth of a meter. Research at the Rice center will focus on the use of nanomaterials in water-based systems, ranging in size from biomolecules and cells to whole organisms and the surrounding environment. New nanostructured membranes are being developed for potable water treatment, treatment of hazardous materials and environmental analysis. Such membranes might be used to improve water quality while providing a higher level of security to water-treatment systems.

”We’re bringing together researchers from Rice and leading French research institutions in the area of nanotechnology and environment with nanochemistry and environmental researchers to discuss how nanotechnologies might be used to protect our environment and the potential dangers they pose,” Wiesner said.

Rice faculty who will make presentations at the workshop include: