SBIR Phase II: Robust Nanofiltration to Enable Challenging Chemical and Pharmaceutical Separations

This SBIR Phase II project focuses on advancing the domestic manufacturing capabilities for high-value nanomaterials for new membrane materials. Previously, the company has developed a novel membrane material with considerable economic, environmental, and nutritional impact in industrial process applications. Commercially available nanofiltration (NF) membrane systems employ polymer membranes, which have inherent chemical and thermal intolerance and are therefore difficult to clean or cannot be used in all separation streams. Meanwhile, 12% of US energy consumption is dedicated to thermal separations, a number that can be cut by a factor of 10 with appropriate physical separation technologies. This technology has applications across food & beverage processing, pharmaceutical production, semiconductor manufacturing, and chemical/petrochemical refining. Creating nanometer-scale features on large areas (tens of square meters) will enable technical opportunities for a multitude of products and applications. In this SBIR Phase II project, the company is conducting process development, pilot demonstration, and scale up efforts toward coating graphene oxide thin films for nanofiltration membrane separations applications. Today?s membrane processes are limited by the selectivity and durability of the nanofiltration membrane. Improved selectivity and operational conditions from the material platform enables improved downstream processes, and new product development. The technology is tolerant to elevated temperatures, extreme pH, organic and chlorinated solvents, and high levels of oxidizers. Transitioning from thermal separations to membrane separations saves 90% of the required energy. Meanwhile, payback time is < 3 months when improving clean-in-place (CIP) protocol for existing NF processes. This is a game changer for the separations industry. Key separations of interest include desalting, whey concentration, sugar fractionation, fatty acid separation, nutraceutical extraction, pharmaceutical purification and black liquor concentration. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.