Membrane

When it comes to cleaning up marine oil spills, it's best if you can use a material that separates the oil from the seawater. Scientists have created a new organic membrane which does exactly that, and it's derived from oyster mushrooms.

Carbon dioxide is an all too common waste product of industry, belched into the air from smokestacks. Now, researchers have developed a new type of fluorinated membrane that can selectively filter CO2 out of flue gas at the point of release.

One opportunity for improvement when it comes to water desalination tech lies in the materials used for filtration systems, with scientists now putting forward a wood-based alternative to the plastic-based membranes currently in use.

Water used for hand-washing is relatively easy to treat for reuse, and now engineers at ETH Zurich have built and tested a standalone hand-washing station for use in public places and developing countries that can do just that.

​A team of MIT engineers has potentially revolutionized the process of dialysis by creating a new membrane from graphene that is able to filter nanometer-sized molecules from solutions up to 10 times faster than current dialysis systems.

Desalination makes saltwater more palatable and potable, but being a bit of an energy guzzler means it isn't the most practical solution in off-grid situations. A new system makes use of nanoparticles to harness the power of the sun and distill water more efficiently, without needing electricity.

A new study conducted at MIT suggests that tweaking the size of a costly membrane could help make pressure-retarded osmosis (PRO) much more competitive.

Vanderbilt psychology Professor Geoffrey Woodman and graduate student Robert Reinhart have found that transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) of the mediofrontal cortex for a period of minutes can change a person's ability to recognize and learn from error for a period of five hours.

Researchers have created an experimental device that indicates boron nitride nanotubes provide an extremely efficient solution for converting the energy of salinity gradients into immediately usable electrical power.

Researchers at Clemson University have discovered that inkjet bioprinting disrupts the membranes of the cells being printed, leaving them open to having proteins inserted.

In a move that brings mankind another step closer to being able to create artificial life forms from scratch, chemists have created artificial self-assembling cell membranes using a novel chemical reaction.

Researchers from the National University of Singapore have created what they claim is the world's first energy-storage membrane, which offers higher energy density and lower production costs than traditional batteries.