Advanced Manufacturing Office Awards $4M For Membrane Development

The federal Advanced Manufacturing Office has awarded a total of $4 million in funding to four advanced membrane projects, the office announced on Wednesday.
Each of the projects was selected under the Membranes and Materials for Energy Efficiency topic within the 31 topics supported by the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. In order to be chosen, each needed to demonstrate technical feasibility for innovation in the process of membrane-based separation as part of DOE’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs. SBIR and STTR were created by Congress as incentives for small businesses to push innovation in partnership with federal agencies.
Membranes used in separation processes are used to recover, isolate, and purify products, and can replace more energy-intensive separation technologies. The DOE reports that separation processes make up 40 to 70 percent of capital and operation costs in the industry and 45 percent of the total process energy used by the chemical and petroleum refining industries across the country.