WCG Clean Water Project

Home of completed WCG projects
Forum rules
Welcome to The Scottish Boinc Team boards. See forum rules in pinned post. If you can't be bothered then try not to be too naughty as I have a delete button to press and a ban hammer to swing.
User avatar
Alez
[ TSBT's Pirate ]
[ TSBT's Pirate ]
Posts: 10363
Joined: Thu Oct 04, 2012 1:22 pm
Location: roaming the planet

#1 WCG Clean Water Project

Post by Alez »

New Lab at Tsinghua University Created to Work on Computing for Clean Water Project Findings
By: The Computing for Clean Water team
Tsinghua University
25 Jul 2017

Summary

Dr. Ming Ma, one of the original members of the Computing for Clean Water research team, has created his own lab at Tsinghua University. Dr. Ma and his team continue to analyze the data generated by the project. Learn more about their current work and plans for the future in this update.

Background

The Computing for Clean Water project was created to provide deeper insight on the molecular scale flow of water through a novel class of filter materials. Thanks to the millions of virtual experiments that the team was able to run on World Community Grid, they discovered conditions under which water can pass through tiny carbon nanotubes much more efficiently. This groundbreaking understanding of a fundamental physical process could help improve access to clean water for millions of people through more efficient water filtration and desalination, and also may have applications in clean energy and medicine.

Image

The team at Tsinghua University includes (left to right) Ming Ma, Kunqi Wang, Wei Cao, and Jin Wang. Not pictured: Yao Cheng

A Growing Team

It has been one year since the main team member, Dr. Ming Ma, returned to Tsinghua University, China, after doing research at University College London and Tel Aviv University. During the past year, as an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Dr. Ma recruited four new researchers as members of the team with the help from Prof. Quanshui Zheng, the leader of the Computing for Clean Water team. The new team members include one postdoc, Dr. Wei Cao; and three PhD students: Jin Wang, Kunqi Wang, and Yao Cheng.

Next Steps

The team is now working on two main tasks. The first task is to improve the algorithm used in the previous study (see the reference below) by incorporating new techniques developed during the last three years, and to implement them into LAMMPS, a molecular dynamics software. The second task is to investigate new systems with the algorithm being developed. With these tasks finished, the team wishes to bring new, interesting information into the volunteer computing community.

We thank everyone who supported Computing for Clean Water, and hope to work with you again in the near future.

Reference

M. Ma, F. Grey, L.M. Shen, M. Urbakh, S. Wu, J.Z. Liu, Y.L. Liu, Q.S. Zheng, Water transport inside carbon nanotubes mediated by phonon-induced oscillating friction, Nature Nanotech., 10 (2015) 692-695
Image
The best form of help from above is a sniper on the rooftop....
User avatar
Alez
[ TSBT's Pirate ]
[ TSBT's Pirate ]
Posts: 10363
Joined: Thu Oct 04, 2012 1:22 pm
Location: roaming the planet

#2 Re: WCG Clean Water Project

Post by Alez »

The Expanding Frontiers of Carbon Nanotube Technology
3 Jul 2018

Summary
The Clean Water Project made an exciting discovery about the possible applications of carbon nanostructures to water purification, biomedical research, and energy research. Dr. Ming Ma, one of the scientists on the project, recently published a paper that summarizes the current status of work in this field.
Image
The team at Tsinghua University includes (left to right) Ming Ma, Kunqi Wang, Wei Cao, and Jin Wang. Not pictured: Yao Cheng

Dr. Ming Ma (of the Computing for Clean Water project) at Tsinghua University recently published a paper in the Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering entitled "Carbon nanostructure based mechano-nanofluidics." The paper is a thorough survey of all the recent research work on fluid flow in carbon nanostructures, such as carbon nanotubes and graphene sheets.

Carbon atoms can form single-atom thick sheets known as graphene. When these are rolled into tube shape, they are called carbon nanotubes. In recent years, there has been a flurry of research work with these nanostructures, called that because they deal with very tiny atomic structures measured in nanometers (billionths of a meter). The Computing for Clean Water project is one example of recent research in this area: By using World Community Grid to simulate water flow through carbon nanotubes at an unprecedented level of detail, the project's research team discovered that under specific conditions, certain kinds of natural vibrations of atoms inside the nanotubes can lead to a 300% increased rate of diffusion (a kind of flow) of water through the nanotubes.

Among their many surprising properties are the ability to dramatically enhance water flow through or past the nanostructures. There is much research being conducted to understand how this happens and ultimately how to make best use of this property to potentially purify water, desalinate water, and meet other goals in biomedical and energy research. Challenges remain in how to efficiently manufacture these materials and how to adjust their structures to achieve the best results.

You can read the paper at http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.10 ... 439/aaa782.

Thanks to everyone who supported this project.
Image
The best form of help from above is a sniper on the rooftop....
Post Reply Previous topicNext topic

Return to “Retired Projects”