Breakthrough in reverse osmosis may lead to most energy-efficient seawater desalination ever
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Graduate students Abhimanyu Das (left) and Akshay Rao adjust a piston tank, the key component to a new desalination process called “double-acting batch reverse osmosis.” (Purdue University photo/Jared Pike)
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. Making fresh water out of seawater usually requires huge amounts of energy. The most widespread process for desalination is called reverse osmosis, which works by flowing seawater over a membrane at high pressure to remove the minerals.
Researchers are developing ways to improve how facilities called concentrated solar power plants produce electricity.
Solar power accounts for about 2% of US electricity, but it could become more widespread if it were cheaper to generate this electricity and make it readily available on cloudy days and at nighttime.
Concentrated solar power plants provide power at off-peak times by storing heat captured from sunlight that is focused by thousands of mirrors onto a small area.
Developments in this research are important steps for putting solar heat-to-electricity generation in direct cost competition with fossil fuels, which generate more than 60% of electricity in the US.
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IMAGE: American Resources Corp. and Purdue University have teamed to advance an environmentally safer method that recycles rare-earth metals to advance clean energy electronic technologies used in hard disk drives, electric. view more
Credit: Illustration provided by Linda Wang
American Resources Corp., a socially responsible supplier of high-quality raw materials, (NASDAQ:AREC) announced Thursday (May 6) an expansion of its existing sponsored research program with Purdue University.
The agreement will focus on advancing the purification of critical and rare-earth elements ( REEs ). The partnership builds on a previous agreement to advance a Purdue-developed technology to refine rare-earth elements purification technology to recycle permanent magnets and lithium-ion batteries pulled from sources such as hard disk drives, electric vehicles and wind turbines.
May 6, 2021
Dead lithium batteries pulled from hard disk drives, electric vehicles could find new life through process that recycles critical rare-earth elements
American Resources Corp. and Purdue University have teamed to advance an environmentally safer method that recycles rare-earth metals to advance clean energy electronic technologies used in hard disk drives, electric vehicles, wind turbines and other electronics.
(Illustration provided by Linda Wang)
FISHERS, Ind. – American Resources Corp., a socially responsible supplier of high-quality raw materials, (NASDAQ:AREC) announced Thursday (May 6) an expansion of its existing sponsored research program with Purdue University.
The agreement will focus on advancing the purification of critical and rare-earth elements (“REEs”). The partnership builds on a previous agreement to advance a Purdue-developed technology to refine rare-earth elements purification technology to recycle permanent magnets and lithium-ion batte
Engineers at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. have developed slab-embedded sensors that can safely speed up a construction timeline by determining concrete strength directly onsite in real time. Their technology removes the need for extensive offsite testing by allowing contractors to verify concrete maturity onsite.
Purdue University Civil Engineering Professor Luna Lu (left) helps install an acoustic wave-enabled sensor into a slab forming the third floor of Engineering and Polytechnic Gateway Complex. The sensors she and her team have developed can instantly measure concrete strength, speeding up a construction timeline.
PHOTOS: Rebecca McElhoe for Purdue University
“Our sensors could help make better data-driven decisions to determine the construction schedule and improve the quality of concrete,” says the school’s American Concrete Pavement Association Professor of Civil Engineering Luna Lu. Her team is working with F.A. Wilhelm Construction Co. to test and com