Nanotechnology challenges:-

1.Providing Renewable Clean Energy

Challenge and Problem
Balancing humankind’s need for energy with the environmental cost to our
planet is a major challenge. Demand for energy is forecasted as increasing
50% by the year 2025 with most of these being fossil fuels. Currently over 1.6
billion humans have no access to electricity and 2.4 billion rely on plant
material, vegetation, or agricultural waste as an energy and heating source.
Our fossil fuel consumption is escalating and could double.

Meanwhile, Earth’s glaciers are receding, the CO2 concentrations in the

atmosphere have nearly doubled, and world temperatures, recorded since
1861, were the hottest in three of the past five years. 1998 was the warmest of
record, 2001 came in the second warmest and 2004 was the fourth warmest.

Nanotechnology Solutions
Nanotechnology will help fill our need for energy solutions through more
efficient lighting, fuel cells, hydrogen storage, solar cells, locally distributed
power generation, and decentralized generation and storage by reinventing the
power grid.

Clean Energy Could Power Nascent Nanotech Industry

It doesn’t take a rocket, or nanotech, scientist to understand that the world
currently faces a host of serious energy challenges. Nearly 2 billion people live
without access to electricity. Natural gas and oil prices have more than
doubled over the last year and are unlikely to subside any time soon. And
China, with its burgeoning middle class, is on target to be the largest consumer
of energy goods and services the globe has ever seen.

If we don’t widely embrace more stable clean-energy supplies soon we will

continue to see brutal wars fought, air and water polluted, and economies
disrupted for decades to come. If we are not smarter planners and more
conscientious stewards we will likely deplete our remaining natural resources
and see increasingly significant disruptions in global climate in our quest to
keep modern industrial society running.
But not all is doom and gloom. There are bright spots in boardrooms, in the
lab, and in governmental circles -- people and organization are addressing
pressing energy and environmental needs by deploying renewable energy
sources.We are seeing the advent of creative political solutions such as
renewable portfolio standards (RPS) as well as other mandates, subsidies, and
standards. RPS, which require that a percentage of a region’s electricity comes
from clean sources such as solar, wind, and wave power, are being
implemented in an increasing number of states and countries. California, for
example, is targeting twenty percent clean-energy sources by 2017. China
recently passed a law that will result in between 60 and 120 GW of clean
energy development by 2020.

Technologies and markets are starting to scale up dramatically. Wind power is

now cost competitive with many forms of conventional energy; the solar PV
industry has nearly tripled in size over the last five years, and industrial giants
such as GE and Sharp now have clean-energy divisions that generate more
than $1 billion annually in revenue.

Efficiently Managing Electrons

Another area of opportunity includes energy efficiency and the development
of smart devices. Nano engineering could lead to smart windows, energy
efficient LEDs and wireless controls. It also could enable highly efficient
conductors and superconductors that could eventually replace current
transmission facilities.

According to a new report by Research and Markets, nano-enabled solutions,

such as supercapacitors, will create entirely new opportunities for local
electricity storage and may gradually lead to new distributed architectures for
electricity grids. These new networks could lead to much lower rates of energy
wastage and improved performance.

Materials for a Hydrogen Future

Nanoscale fabrication, for hydrogen production, storage, and fuel cells, could
make the dream of a hydrogen future a reality. A number of companies are
investing heavily in applying nanotechnology to this burgeoning area.
Nanotech research firm Cientifica, for example, reports that carbon nanotubes
could enable a tenfold improvement in the performance of fuel cells, together
with a 50% reduction of the cost of catalyst material. As prices drop over the
next five years, the research firm estimates they will be used in 70% of all fuel
cells.
And Rutgers scientists are using nanotechnology in chemical reactions that
could provide hydrogen for tomorrow's fuel-cell powered vehicles. In a paper
recently published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society,
researchers at Rutgers describe how they make a finely textured surface of the
metal iridium that can be used to extract hydrogen from ammonia, then
captured and fed to a fuel cell.

Another company, Hydrogen Solar, is using nanotechnology to enable the

production of hydrogen from the sun. The company’s Tandem Cell converts
the energy of sunlight directly into hydrogen gas by splitting water into its
constituent elements, hydrogen and oxygen. The cell has nano-crystalline
coatings of metal oxides, which have vast surface areas and enable the cell to
capture the full spectrum of ultraviolet light.

A PR mastermind that I know recently said that: "nanotech makes clean-tech

sexy, and clean-tech makes nanotech nice." In many ways I couldn’t agree
more. As outlined above, some of the hottest and most exciting developments
in the clean-energy space revolve around breakthroughs in nanotechnology.
And clean energy provides a motivational pull for nanotech companies and
pioneers that want to solve some of the most pressing issues of our time.

If a confluence of forces continues to line up, and real technologies and

business models can be developed, nanotech may just end up being powered
by a new wave of clean-energy development.

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2.Supplying Clean Water Globally

Challenge and Problem
Water is one of the Earth's most precious natural resources. Most of it is
saltwater. Fresh usable water is only 3% of the world’s supply and two-thirds
of that is frozen in glaciers, ice caps and icebergs. The remaining 1% is
available for human consumption.

Today 1.1 billion people don’t have access to safe water and 2.4 billion lack
sanitation facilities. 80% of developing world diseases are water-borne with an
estimate of 3.4 million deaths, mostly children, in 1998 of water-related
diseases.

Demand for fresh water is increasing. Agriculture currently uses 70% of the
world’s water supply. To feed 2 billion more by the year 2030 there will be
60% increase in demand on the water supply. Considering the current rates of
consumption, population and development, some two-thirds of the world
population will be affected by droughts by the year 2050.

Nanotechnology Solutions
Nanotechnology will provide part of the solution for this challenge through
inexpensive decentralized water purification, detection on the molecular level
of contaminants, and greatly improved filtration systems.

Emulating Biology through Nanotechnology to Purify

Water
Clean water—for humans and animals, for agriculture, for industry—is a
fundamental necessity. Billions of people worldwide, however, do not have
access to clean drinking water. Even in the industrialized countries, with their
enormously expensive water distribution and purification infrastructures,
maintaining the purity of water supplies remains a pressing issue, particularly
with the pressure to remediate pollution legacies accumulated over decades.

Contrary to popular belief, purifying water, even including desalination, is not

intrinsically an energy-expensive problem. Biosystems selectively separate
solutes from water at low concentrations with much less fuss than current
technology; kidneys are an example. Supplying pure water is also not
intrinsically a capital-intensive problem. With better technology, decentralized
purification is not only practical but considerably cheaper. Indeed, in
industrialized countries pollution control is already becoming decentralized,
due to restrictions on discharge concentrations of toxins.

Nanotechnology promises to considerably improve decentralized water

purification systems, in emulation of biological capabilities. Better control of
nanoscale fabrication will lead to large gains in efficiency and longevity in
such areas as:

• Membrane technologies such as reverse osmosis and

electrodialysis (both much used in pollution control and desalination);
• Adsorption processes such as ion exchange;
• Advanced oxidative technologies (e.g., photo-oxidation) for
disinfection;
• Cheaper synthesis of compounds for the selective extraction of
highly toxic solutes (e.g., mercury).
Moreover, "switchable" adsorbing materials, which could be eluted merely by
an external "trigger" such as light or electricity, will be a vast improvement
over current versions whose regeneration typically requires extreme chemical
measures (e.g., flushing with brine) that lead to even greater amounts of
wastewater. Such materials, however, will require nanoscale design and
fabrication.

REVERSE OSMOSIS AND ULTRAFILTRATION SYSTEMS

Remco Engineering reverse osmosis systems fill a unique position in

the area of water and wastewater treatment. Our reverse osmosis
systems provide complete water purification solutions with
microprocessor control and fiberglass support skids for trouble free
automatic operation and a long useful life.

Our systems use a recycle loop that takes part of the reject water from
the system and recycles it back to the holding tank that feeds the
reverse osmosis pump. This is possible because of the water softening
system we include with each system. This allows us to use 94%+ of the
water we receive into the system. Our competitors will reject up to 50%
of the water to drain to keep the membranes from fouling with the water
hardness. We remove the hardness first.

Systems can be run with a softener or anti-scalant feed. No other

chemicals are required. . No expensive specialty chemicals that you
can forget to order and foul your membrane. . The carbon bed reacts
with the chlorine and has an almost infinite life. Only plugging of the
carbon would require its' replacement. The only periodic maintenance
is to change the prefilter to keep the flow rate at an acceptable level.

Our reverse osmosis systems are sized to handle from 1000gallons per
day to 500,000 gallons per day. Small reverse osmosis systems have
all components mounted on one skid. Larger systems have individual
tanks and a separate skid for the RO system.

Installation is simply placing the skid in place, connecting power, city

water and the drain lines. Larger reverse osmosis systems will require
some simple interconnect plumbing from the feed tanks. In less than 4
hours, most all systems can be installed and running.

Each Remco system includes:

o 5 micron prefiltration;
 o High flow carbon bed for chlorine removal with an
automatic timed backwash;
o Either a two tank water softening system to remove
water hardness or an anti-scalant feed to sequester the
calcium and mangesium.
o A fiberglass skid constructed of epoxy bonded
fiberglass structural material with a control panel mounting
surface and supports for the reverse osmosis (RO) vessels;
o A stainless steel multistage reverse osmosis pump;
o PVC or Stainless Steel interconnection plumbing.
o Nema 4x (waterproof) fiberglass control panel;
o Fiberglass reverse osmosis pressure vessels;
o Thin Film composite reverse osmosis membranes
with 97%, 99% or 99.5%rejection;
o Preprogrammed microprocessor controller interfaced
to all pumps and level controls;
o Softened water storage tank with level controls
interfaced to the microprocessor or metering pump for the
anti-scalant feed;
o Reverse osmosis water storage tank with level
controls interfaced to the microprocessor;
o Flowmeters on permeate, reject, and recycle streams;
o Conductivity meter on permeate stream;
o Valves for adjusting recycle rate, pump output
pressure, and backpressure;
o Ultraviolet sterilizer on the permeate output; (optional)
o up to 94%+ water usage efficiency due to the recycle
loop and water softening (94% of the water is permeate,
6% of the water is dumped to drain)
o
o Optional computer monitor and control system for
data logging and remote service and troublshooting

With other systems, the base price is a stripped system and everything
useful is an extra cost option. We have very few options. Ours systems
are designed to run efficiently, continuously, and with minimum down
time. We don't like field service so if it broke, we changed it for
something that won't break. Each service call is money out of our
pocket so we won't sell you a system that needs lots of service.

We design our systems to include both softening and carbon treatment

for removal of all hardness ions and chlorine. The hardness ions foul
the reverse osmosis membrane and require periodic cleaning to
remove them. If the reverse osmosis membranes become too fouled,
the membranes will need to be replaced. By removing the hardness
totally, we avoid periodic membrane cleaning totally. We have some
systems that are only cleaned on an annual basis. The chlorine
removal is to prevent oxidation of the membrane surface.

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3.Healing and Preserving the environment

Challenge and Problem
There is an ever-increasing demand for natural resources and living space for
humans, while toxics continue to build up in our water and soil. Biodiversity is
being destroyed world wide with 7 million hectares of forest being lost
annually. Half of our world’s forests and a quarter of our coral reefs are gone.

Biodiversity decreases each year, with increasing threats especially to the

oceans. Damage to the atmosphere’s ozone layer has slowed but a hole still
remains. Many believe that man-made greenhouse gases are causing
disruption to the planet’s climate, a process popularly termed ‘global
warming.’ Proposals to correct this are expensive and unlikely to be followed
by developing nations who see economic advance as more urgent.

Nanotechnology Solutions
Nanotechnology will provide solutions through precision pollution monitoring
using nanosensors, lower energy needs due to lightweight strong materials,
and reducing the use of harsh cleansers through the applications of
nanocoatings to surfaces. A more advanced nanotechnology solution will be
building our products with molecular-level precision through the use of
productive nanosystems, resulting in virtually no chemical waste.

promoting transformative technologies

Foresight Institute is a leading think tank and public interest organization
focused on transformative future technologies. Founded in 1986, its mission is
to discover and promote the upsides, and help avoid the dangers, of
nanotechnology, AI, biotech, and similar life-changing developments.

Foresight is the primary force pushing for the kind of nanotechnology that will
truly transform our future, from medicine to the environment to space
settlement. We bring that vision and goal to new audiences, including
inspiring young researchers.

Foresight's mission is to:

 speed development of nanotechnology and other key fundamental

technologies,
 promote beneficial uses of these revolutionary technologies, and
reduce misuse
 and accidents potentially associated with them.

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4.Improving Health and Longevity

Challenge and Problem
Humans are living longer lives. At the turn of the century, men and women
expected to live to 48 and 51 years respectively. That life expectancy is now
74 and 80 years and could be significantly longer with anti-aging
advancements currently being researched.

At the same time, 30 new highly infectious diseases have been discovered in
the last 20 years. These diseases account for 30% of the deaths worldwide and
include HIV/AIDS, Ebola and the Avian Flu. HIV/AIDS, the most critical
threat, has killed 22 million and infected 42 million. In 2003 roughly 5 million
people became infected worldwide. AIDS according to a United Nations study
is increasingly becoming global as it spreads rapidly to Eastern Europe and
Asia.

Cancer kills over 500,000 people and 1.5 million are diagnosed annually in the
United States. According to the World Cancer Report, there could be a 50%
increase to 15 million new cases in the year 2020 primarily attributed to an
aging population worldwide.

Nanotechnology Solutions
Recent nanotechnology research is making tremendous progress in the medical
field. Some of the nanotechnology applications in the arena will be
inexpensive and rapid diagnostics, new methods of drug delivery, and faster
development of new drugs. Some longer term and even more powerful
nanotechnology solutions will repair DNA and cellular damage and customize
drug therapy.
Developing Biomedical Tools to Repair Molecular and
Cellular Damage
I consider it likely that within the next few decades we will develop the
biomedical tools to repair all the major types of molecular and cellular damage
that accumulate during life and eventually kill us: in a phrase, to reverse aging.
But that reversal will not be complete. All the major types of damage will be
reversed, but only partly so. In several cases this incompleteness is because the
category of damage in question is heterogeneous, consisting of a spectrum of
variations on a theme, some of which are harder to repair than others. In the
short term it’s enough to repair only the easiest variants and thereby reduce the
total damage load a fair amount, but in the longer term the harder variants will
accumulate to levels that are problematic even if we’re fixing the easy variants
really thoroughly. Hence, we will have to improve these therapies over time in
order to repair ever-trickier variants of these types of damage. I predict that
nanotechnological solutions will eventually play a major role in these
rejuvenation therapies. Here I briefly describe some categories of age-related
damage in which I expect nanotechnology to play a particularly important
role.

Infectious diseases
Our immune system is extremely good at getting rid of infections, but viruses
and bacteria are also extremely good at evading our immune system: it’s an
arms race. If we want to live a really long time, we must do everything we can
to augment our immune system to eliminate infections that our natural
immune system cannot. This includes both acute infections that kill people
quickly and persistent ones that are brought under control by our natural
defences but remain present in a latent state and contribute to immune
senescence (the decline of efficacy of the immune system with age).

Nanotechnology can potentially improve on anything that biotechnology could

to in this regard, because of the structure of infectious agents. Infections come
in two main forms: bacterial and viral. Even though by some definitions
viruses are not alive, they share with bacteria one key characteristic: their
genome is made of nucleic acids. A fundamental limitation of what enzymes
can do to the genomes of bacteria and infections is imposed by the length of
DNA or RNA sequence that they can recognise as being from the virus or
bacterium and not our own. This limitation should be straightforward to
overcome using enzyme-sized non-biological structures (which for brevity I
will hereafter call "nanobots") that have arbitrarily extensive information
(possibly transmitted to them) on what sequences are human and what are not.
This will therefore allow such machines to be targeted to DNA or RNA purely
on the basis of sequence and without side-effects caused by destruction of
human nucleic acids. Thus, these machines can invade all parts of the cell in
all tissues, whereas enzymatic or immune defences against infections must be
much more cautious.

Cancer
The potential role of nanotechnology in combating cancer is quite similar to its
role in combating infectious diseases: it can potentially repair our DNA in
cells that have acquired mutations. In this case, however, it is also important to
repair "epigenetic" alterations — chemical modifications of DNA or of
histones, the proteins around which DNA is wrapped — because these
changes determine whether and at what rate particular genes are expressed
(give rise to their encoded proteins). This is much harder, because even though
all our cells have the same DNA sequence (except for a few special exceptions
related to the immune system), the epigenetic state of different cells varies
greatly. Moreover, this state cannot be "reset" in a given cell, because it
defines the type of cell it is — brain cells express some proteins, liver cells
express others, and that difference is a result of these cells’ different epigenetic
states.

In due course, we will know enough about the correct epigenetic state of all
cell types to be able to reset it using nanobots just as precisely as we can
correct DNA sequences or delete foreign ones. But biology is unimaginably
complicated, so the preferable approach is to look for solutions that do not
require such thorough understanding of what’s "correct". A solution that
would seem plausible is to exploit the fact that epigenetic changes, like genetic
ones, are random — they have been termed "epimutations". This would allow
a statistical approach: a surveying of the cells in a given tissue and
identification of ones that have suspicious epigenetic patterns. Interestingly,
"suspicious" would probably not be defined simply as "minority", because the
cells to be targeted are ones that are dividing more insistently than they are
supposed to. So what one would want to look for are statistically implausible
similarities between the epigenetic patterns of a group of cells — not even
necessarily spatially adjacent cells, as cancers can shed cells into the
circulation.

Other nuclear mutations and epimutations

A cell can of course accumulate mutations or epimutations that make it
misbehave in ways other than cancer. In the short term this may not be a
problem for longevity because the risk of cancer has ratcheted up our natural
DNA maintenance and repair systems so well that non-cancer problems —
which have to occur in a reasonable proportion of the cells in a tissue, not just
in one originating cell — should not occur for many times a currently normal
lifetime. But they’ll happen eventually.

Here the solution for mutations is as above, and the solution for epimutations
may be similar to the above, but in this case the statistics would be different —
we would want to "regress to the mean" and restore patterns present in most
cells of the tissue. Here there is a potential challenge in respect of epigenetic
changes that occur cyclically, e.g. through the cell cycle, but such changes are
probably far fewer in number than those that define the differentiated state —
maybe few enough in number that we will by this time have enumerated them
fully.