InnVTek Can Build A Superhighway For Nanoparticles That Is Useful In Every Chemical & Battery Process
Credit to Author: Michael Barnard| Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2019 17:59:17 +0000
Published on November 29th, 2019 | by Michael Barnard
November 29th, 2019 by Michael Barnard
We don’t think about it most of the time, but in every battery, fuel cell, and hydrogen electrolyzer, actual physical items are passing through membranes of various types. The membranes are incredibly thin, but apparently solid. However, nanoparticles — including ions and electrons — are passing through them. These things have actual mass and dimensions, no matter how infinitesimally small. The global membrane market is over $10 billion annually today, and growing at double digit rates. That’s the direct revenue, but the markets that they make viable are worth trillions.
Imagine a 3-micron membrane blown up a million times. It’s like the streets of a city where the road plan was formed from walking trails, goat tracks and courtyards. It’s a mess of narrow, clogged arteries with innumerable dead ends. Imagine trying to get a lot of cars through this maze in both directions. It’s not optimized for rapid transportation across the city.
City of London circa 1920 courtesy UK National Archives
There have been some attempts to improve this. Mostly, they involve the equivalent of expressways through the membrane, which means that if traffic jams build up on the expressway, things grind to a halt. This is just like the Don Valley Parking Lot in Toronto. Once you are on an expressway, you just hope things proceed smoothly, because if they don’t, you’re stuck. Comparatively, Vancouver avoided expressways, which means that if you run into a traffic jam, it’s easy to turn left, turn right and bypass it.
Imagine now stacking a million cities like this on top of one another, each with their 2D road maze and occasional expressways. That’s the state of the art of membranes. There are dead ends. There are blockages. They are easy to clog. They degrade faster. Heat builds up. Tempers flare. Road rage ensues. Deliveries are delayed.
Lithium-ion batteries have this problem. Proton exchange membrane (PEM) hydrogen production facilities have this problem. Water filtration systems have this problem. We never see them, but we are surrounded by this problem.
Gyroid of intersecting curves image courtesy US DoE
Simulations in the 2000s suggested a better way. They suggested that if you could form a 3D structure called a gyroid, the throughput would increase enormously. There wouldn’t be any dead ends. If there was a jam somewhere, it would be easy for the particles transiting the membrane to go up, down, or sideways as necessary to clear it. When jams occurred, the smooth curves would smooth friction at that nano scale, reducing heat build up and allowing smooth continued flow.
It would be a superhighway for nanoparticles.
That has pretty big implications. Membranes, whether they are in water filtration plants, flow batteries, or dialysis machines, have limitations. It takes energy to push the nanoparticles through the membranes. The dead spots tend to generate heat which builds up over time and degrades the membrane. They tend to get clogged. They tend to wear out. They stop working as efficiently. They have to be replaced.
A gyroid membrane is more efficient in most of those ways. It takes less energy to get a bunch of nanoparticles from one side to the other and back. It doesn’t build up heat in spots creating early degradation. It doesn’t get as clogged as quickly. It doesn’t wear out as quickly. It lasts longer. Maintenance is lower.
Imagine a PEM hydrogen electrolyzer that used one of these membranes. Say it was 80% efficient with an old membrane and that the membrane lasted a decade with slowly degrading efficiency. Imagine if it was 85% efficient, stayed effective longer, and lasted 20 years before it needed replacing.
Imagine a fuel cell like the Bloom Box. Their fuel cells degrade and have to be replaced after 8-10 years at great expense. Imagine if they kept working five years longer at greater efficiency.
Imagine a lithium-ion battery. Yes, there are membranes in Tesla’s batteries too. The electrolyte is some variant of lithium salt, and when you put electricity into it lithium ions go one way and the ligand ions go the other through membranes. Getting electricity out reverses the process, but the chemistry is still pushing nanoparticles through a million stacked Byzantine cities. Imagine getting a few percent more efficiency out of every single lithium-ion battery on the planet.
Yeah, big stuff. Applicable everywhere. Foundational improvement. Miles more range for every electric car, as one example. Cheaper drinking water for southern Florida when the Biscayne Aquifer gives up due to sea level rise as another. Faster dialysis for kidney disease sufferers.
So what’s the problem? Well, they are really hard to make. Until now.
I spent a couple of hours on video conference today with a couple of deep nanomaterials innovators, Brandy Kinkead and Aseem Pandey, co-founders of InnVTek, and then read one of their core published papers on the subject, Bicontinuous Intraphase Jammed Emulsion Gels: A New Soft Material Enabling Direct Isolation of Co-Continuous Hierarchial Porous Materials. They’ve created a proprietary process, with patents for North America and Europe almost complete, that allows them to pour a self-assembling gyroid nanomembrane in a single deposition process.
Mix, pour a 5-micron layer, apply a bit of heat and voila, a gyroid superhighway for nanoparticles. And they can do it for multiple polymer types.
But wait, there’s more. A lot of these membranes have catalysts and binders to enable them to transform materials or trap them in specific ways. In a typical membrane, these are scattered somewhat chaotically, often stuck in the aforementioned dead ends. And a lot of these catalysts are expensive, things like platinum and palladium. The ability to ensure that optimal nanoparticles passing optimally diffuse catalysts can save a lot of money too.
Yes, their self-assembling process does that too.
Membranes made with InnVTek’s process will work better, require less energy and last longer. When you’re talking a $10 billion market, that’s a pretty good foundational technology.
Right now they are small. They have unique intellectual capital that they are protecting. Other innovators in the space are five years behind them, which is kind of the problem. Just explaining that they’ve made it possible to pour a 3D superhighway for nanoparticles is tough.
They have a bit of engineering ahead of them. They can pour a 5-micron film across a meter square easily today. They can make a 500 ml bioreactor easily. Scaling up requires some thermal engineering, which means that they need that thermal engineer. They need some seed investment for fairly straightforward engineering, not fundamental discovery. It’s a nice spot to be in. They already had a Swiss company beat a path to their door.
They’ve invented a better mousetrap. And it’s going to make a difference to our low-carbon future economy, helping with greater efficiency in innumerable next-generation industrial and energy components.
Follow CleanTechnica on Google News.
It will make you happy & help you live in peace for the rest of your life.
Michael Barnard is Chief Strategist with TFIE Strategy Inc. He works with startups, existing businesses and investors to identify opportunities for significant bottom line growth and cost takeout in our rapidly transforming world. He is editor of The Future is Electric, a Medium publication. He regularly publishes analyses of low-carbon technology and policy in sites including Newsweek, Slate, Forbes, Huffington Post, Quartz, CleanTechnica and RenewEconomy, and his work is regularly included in textbooks. Third-party articles on his analyses and interviews have been published in dozens of news sites globally and have reached #1 on Reddit Science. Much of his work originates on Quora.com, where Mike has been a Top Writer annually since 2012. He’s available for consulting engagements, speaking engagements and Board positions.