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Boston MA (SPX) Sep 08, 2023 -
After exposure in space aboard the International Space Station, a new kind of surface treatment significantly reduced the growth of biofilms, scientists report. Biofilms are mats of microbial or fun
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Massachusetts Institute of Technology
About a quarter of a percent of the entire gross domestic product of industrialized countries is estimated to be lost through a single technical issue: the fouling of heat exchanger surfaces by salts and other dissolved minerals. This fouling lowers the efficiency of multiple industrial processes and often requires expensive countermeasures such as water pretreatment. Now, findings from MIT could lead to a new way of reducing such fouling, and potentially even enable turning that deleterious process into a productive one that can yield saleable products.
The findings are the result of years of work by recent MIT graduates Samantha McBride PhD ’20 and Henri-Louis Girard PhD ’20 with professor of mechanical engineering Kripa Varanasi. The work, reported today in the journal Science Advances, shows that due to a combination of hydrophobic (water repelling) surfaces and heat, dissolved salts can crystallize in a way that makes it easy to remove