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Athens, OH
www.ohio.edu/engineering/ceer/
Booth: 331
The GreenBox: Ammonia and Nitrate Removal with Energy Cogeneration
Currently, wastewater treatment solutions for ammonia consume a significant amount of energy, have high operational costs, require significant capital investment, are not easily adaptable to tighter emissions regulations and are large in size. In addition, current methods do not scale-down well for non-point source pollution, which usually comes from rural areas such as livestock facilities and fertilizer run-off leading to algae bloom. For this reason, the EPA has limited the nitrate contamination level in drinking water to 10 mg/l with further reduction under consideration. Ohio University’s patented ammonia electrolysis is the only technology that allows the direct conversion of ammonia into benign pure nitrogen gas and pure fuel grade hydrogen gas. The process, also known as the “Ammonia GreenBox” is compact, consumes less energy, reduces capital and operational costs and is amenable to regulatory changes via process control. Finally, the GreenBox provides an opportunity to generate hydrogen for use within the wastewater treatment plant infrastructure. As megatrends in population growth and urbanization continue to increase, the GreenBox provides the opportunity to retrofit and improve on current remediation plants, while also aiding in the next generation of plants that can handle more waste output from municipalities.
Micro-porous metal sheet membrane for high throughput filtering
Thinness and uniform small pore sizes are the salient features of MoleculeWorks@TM metal sheet membrane products, compared to other porous metal or metal foam materials. The uniform small pore size provides high filtering efficiency, while thinness of the membrane sheet enables filtering to be conducted at high throughput and renders membrane cleaning by simple back flushing. The surface pore size can be tailored over the range of 10 to 1000nm to meet different application needs. Complete filtering of micro-algae at micrometer sizes from water, colloidal particles of about 50nm from water, and aerosol particulates of 30 to 300nm from air are demonstrated. The novel membrane can be used to build compact high throughput filters for a range of applications, including i) treatment of seawater and grey water, ii) air purification, iii) cleanup of black smog or soot particulates from combustion exhaust, and iv) versatile laboratory filtration.
