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https://scitechdaily.com/99-efficiency-princeton-engineers-have-developed-a-new-way-to-remove-microplastics-from-water/>
"Princeton Engineering researchers have developed a cost-effective way to use
breakfast foods to create a material that can remove salt and microplastics
from seawater.
The researchers used egg whites to create an aerogel, a versatile material
known for its light weight and porosity. It has a range of uses, including
water filtration, energy storage, and sound and thermal insulation. Craig
Arnold, the Susan Dod Brown Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
and vice dean of innovation at Princeton, leads a lab that focuses on creating
new materials, including aerogels, for engineering purposes.
One day, sitting in a faculty meeting, he had an idea.
“I was sitting there, staring at the bread in my sandwich,” said Arnold. “And I
thought to myself, this is exactly the kind of structure that we need.” So he
asked his lab group to make different bread recipes mixed with carbon to see if
they could recreate the aerogel structure he was looking for. None of them
worked quite right initially, so the team kept eliminating ingredients as they
tested, until eventually, only egg whites remained.
“We started with a more complex system,” Arnold said, “and we just kept
reducing, reducing, reducing, until we got down to the core of what it was. It
was the proteins in the egg whites that were leading to the structures that we
needed.”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
