• HOME
  • NEWS
    • BIOENGINEERING
    • SCIENCE NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • FORUM
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • CONTACT US
Sunday, January 24, 2021
BIOENGINEER.ORG
No Result
View All Result
  • Login
  • HOME
  • NEWS
    • BIOENGINEERING
    • SCIENCE NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • FORUM
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • CONTACT US
  • HOME
  • NEWS
    • BIOENGINEERING
    • SCIENCE NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • FORUM
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • CONTACT US
No Result
View All Result
Bioengineer.org
No Result
View All Result
Home NEWS Science News

NSF renews Rice-based NEWT Center for water treatment

Bioengineer by Bioengineer
October 15, 2020
in Science News
0
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on LinkedinShare on RedditShare on Telegram

Partnership primed to introduce game-changing technologies to address global needs

IMAGE

Credit: Rice University

HOUSTON – (Oct. 15, 2020) – The Nanotechnology Enabled Water Treatment Center (NEWT), a National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center (ERC) with its headquarters at Rice University, has earned a five-year renewal to continue its work on next-generation water treatment systems.

The multi-institution, multidisciplinary center under the direction of Rice environmental engineer Pedro Alvarez is a partnership between academia, industry and government to produce transformational technology as well as engineers primed to lead the global economy. The NSF award is for $16.5 million.

Along with Rice, NEWT relies on expertise from partners at Arizona State University, the University of Texas at El Paso and Yale University.

NEWT’s next five years will focus on three thrusts: the development of multifunctional nanomaterials to selectively transform pollutants into harmless byproducts; low-energy desalination and disinfection of water through nanophotonics and thin-film nanocomposite materials; and strategies to control fouling and scaling in water-treatment processes and oil and gas production.

NEWT has spearheaded research initiatives since 2015 intended to provide access to clean water anywhere in the world. The enabling technologies are easy to deploy and tap unconventional energy sources, especially solar, for humanitarian and emergency aid.

Among its other initiatives, NEWT and its partners study the decontamination of brackish water produced during oil and gas recovery to reduce the industry’s environmental impact, as well as nano-based advanced oxidation processes that remove contaminants, including antibiotic-resistant bacteria and the genetic remnants that spread resistance.

In its first five years, NEWT researchers produced 313 journal papers that represented significant advances in fundamental nanoscience, particularly in filtration technologies that remove contaminants from water. Alvarez noted 33 students have earned a Ph.D. through the program.

He used a recent study by the Rice lab of Michael Wong as an example. It detailed a nano-enabled method for the rapid photocatalytic defluorination of “forever chemicals” PFOA and GenX. “These chemicals are showing up in the blood of newborn babies,” Alvarez said. “They’re in mother’s milk. They’re in polar bears in remote locations. We don’t know how toxic they are or what long-term effects they cause, but what is certain is that current water treatment facilities do not remove them.

“There are technologies that can destroy them, but they’re so energy-intensive that they resemble using a bomb to kill a mosquito,” he said. “Here we have a catalyst that destroys this pollutant using sunlight, a low-energy, green approach that doesn’t require chemical additives. This illustrates how our technologies can do things that existing technologies cannot accomplish.”

The steady advance of nanotechnology over the past five years has broadened the center’s vision, he said.

“The big picture is that we have demonstrated nanotechnology can be used at scale to enhance treatments,” Alvarez said. “These technologies are the key to systems that are not only more efficient but also smaller and easier to deploy.”

Examples from Rice’s own labs include sun-powered systems that desalinate water by membrane distillation, and catalysis for water treatment. “Qilin Li’s nanophotonic membrane distillation is planned to be deployed in refugee camps through a Rice alum and his company,” he said. “That’s a big win.”

Techniques learned through Rice’s continuing efforts to “trap and zap” antibiotic-resistant bacteria and the genes they release has also led to efforts to deactivate the virus that causes COVID-19 in wastewater.

Education is a key component of NEWT, primarily through the NanoEnvironmental Engineering for Teachers (NEET) program offered by the Rice Office of STEM Engagement. The program empowers high school science, environmental and biology teachers to implement engineering-based classroom activities on water sustainability.

The program is administered by Carolyn Nichol, director of the office and a faculty fellow in Rice’s Department of Chemistry.

###

Additional Contact:
Mike Williams

713-348-6728

[email protected]

This news release can be found online at https://news.rice.edu/2020/10/15/nsf-renews-rice-based-newt-center-for-water-treatment/

Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews.

Image for download:

https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2020/10/1019_NEWT-2-WEB.jpg

CAPTION: Pedro Alvarez.
(Credit: Tommy LaVergne/Rice University)

Related materials:

Rice, ASU, Yale, UTEP win NSF engineering research center:
http://news.rice.edu/2015/08/10/rice-asu-yale-utep-win-nsf-engineering-research-center/

NEWT Center:
https://www.newtcenter.org

George R. Brown School of Engineering:
https://engineering.rice.edu

Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation’s top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,978 undergraduates and 3,192 graduate students, Rice’s undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is just under 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for lots of race/class interaction and No. 1 for quality of life by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance.

Media Contact
Jeff Falk
[email protected]

Original Source

https://news.rice.edu/2020/10/15/nsf-renews-rice-based-newt-center-for-water-treatment/

Tags: Biomedical/Environmental/Chemical EngineeringEcology/EnvironmentEnergy/Fuel (non-petroleum)Hydrology/Water ResourcesIndustrial Engineering/ChemistryNanotechnology/MicromachinesPollution/RemediationTechnology/Engineering/Computer Science
Share12Tweet8Share2ShareShareShare2

Related Posts

IMAGE

Regulating the ribosomal RNA production line

January 22, 2021
IMAGE

A professor from RUDN University developed new liquid crystals

January 22, 2021

New technique builds super-hard metals from nanoparticles

January 22, 2021

No more needles for diagnostic tests?

January 22, 2021
Next Post
IMAGE

Monkey study suggests that they, like humans, may have 'self-domesticated'

IMAGE

Rare congenital heart defect rescued by protease inhibition

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

POPULAR NEWS

  • IMAGE

    The map of nuclear deformation takes the form of a mountain landscape

    54 shares
    Share 22 Tweet 14
  • People living with HIV face premature heart disease and barriers to care

    65 shares
    Share 26 Tweet 16
  • New drug form may help treat osteoporosis, calcium-related disorders

    40 shares
    Share 16 Tweet 10
  • New findings help explain how COVID-19 overpowers the immune system

    35 shares
    Share 14 Tweet 9

About

We bring you the latest biotechnology news from best research centers and universities around the world. Check our website.

Follow us

Tags

Technology/Engineering/Computer ScienceBiologyClimate ChangePublic HealthMaterialsInfectious/Emerging DiseasesMedicine/HealthcancerGeneticsCell BiologyEcology/EnvironmentChemistry/Physics/Materials Sciences

Recent Posts

  • Regulating the ribosomal RNA production line
  • A professor from RUDN University developed new liquid crystals
  • New technique builds super-hard metals from nanoparticles
  • No more needles for diagnostic tests?
  • Contact Us

© 2019 Bioengineer.org - Biotechnology news by Science Magazine - Scienmag.

No Result
View All Result
  • Homepages
    • Home Page 1
    • Home Page 2
  • News
  • National
  • Business
  • Health
  • Lifestyle
  • Science

© 2019 Bioengineer.org - Biotechnology news by Science Magazine - Scienmag.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Create New Account!

Fill the forms below to register

All fields are required. Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In