STTR Phase I: Novel Adsorbents for Selective Removal of Naturally Occurring Radionuclide Materials (NORM) from Fracking-Produced Water

STTR 第一阶段：用于从水力压裂产生的水中选择性去除天然存在的放射性核素材料 (NORM) 的新型吸附剂

• 批准号: 2105625
• 负责人: Urmila Diwekar
• 金额: $ 25.6万
• 依托单位: Stochastic Research Technologies LLC
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-03-01 至 2023-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2105625&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: STTR; Phase; Novel; Adsorbents; Selective

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I project is to provide a novel and cost-effective technology to remove NORM (Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials) from the wastewater produced by fracking. The proposed research is of fundamental and practical significance to the area of produced water treatment. The proposed approach seeks to remove 99% of NORM from produced waters effectively, an important advance for environmental treatment. This approach also is expected to reduce the cost of the treatment technology and the associated impact on cost per barrel of gas and oil. This STTR Phase I project proposes to verify the effectiveness of new adsorbents waste water clean-up associated with fracking. The geologic formations containing oil and gas deposits contain Naturally Occurring Radionuclide Materials, referred to as NORM. Oil and gas fracking brings NORM to the surface in a concentrated form, posing a radiation safety hazard. There is currently no commercial product on the market to remove NORM from concentrated produced and flow back water selectively. By developing theory and computational methods with the Group Contribution method (GCM) and a novel optimization-based Computer-Aided Molecular Design (CAMD) framework, the teams seeks to generate better clay-based adsorbents than are currently commercially available for removal of produced water impurities. The modeling results need to be verified experimentally by synthesizing thenew adsorbents and comparing their adsorption behavior to the theoretically-predicted isotherms before commercializing them. The research may result in efficient and cost-effective adsorbents customized for the type of water contamination encountered using the new CAMD frameworks and cutting-edge experiments.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.

该小企业技术转让 (STTR) 第一阶段项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力是提供一种新颖且具有成本效益的技术，从水力压裂产生的废水中去除 NORM（天然放射性物质）。该研究对于采出水处理领域具有重要的基础和现实意义。所提出的方法旨在有效去除采出水中 99% 的 NORM，这是环境处理的重要进步。这种方法预计还将降低处理技术的成本以及对每桶天然气和石油成本的相关影响。 STTR 第一阶段项目旨在验证与水力压裂相关的新型吸附剂废水净化的有效性。含有石油和天然气矿床的地质构造含有天然存在的放射性核素材料，简称为 NORM。 石油和天然气水力压裂将 NORM 以浓缩形式带到地表，造成辐射安全隐患。目前市场上还没有商业产品可以选择性地从浓缩产出水中和回流水中去除 NORM。 通过使用群贡献法 (GCM) 和新颖的基于优化的计算机辅助分子设计 (CAMD) 框架开发理论和计算方法，团队力求生成比目前商业上可用于去除采出水的更好的粘土基吸附剂杂质。在将其商业化之前，需要通过合成新吸附剂并将其吸附行为与理论预测的等温线进行比较来对建模结果进行实验验证。 该研究可能会使用新的 CAMD 框架和尖端实验，针对所遇到的水污染类型定制高效且具有成本效益的吸附剂。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值进行评估，被认为值得支持以及更广泛的影响审查标准。