In recent years, the efficacy and cost-efrfectiveness of 99

The efficacy of nano- and micro-scale particles (NPs) for a plethora of diverse industrial applications has been well
documented. For example, Zhang et. al. at Lehigh University have identified some 39 carcinogenic CHC pollutants that can
be rapidly and often completely converted into benign subspecies using a single type of NP (see Zhang et. al, Journal of
Nanoparticle Research 5: 323–332, 2003). The desire to utilize these highly effective particles ex-situ for a growing list of
full-scale environmental, medical, chemical-processing, and other industrial applications has been a natural consequence of
this exiting research.

Unfortunately, there has been one tenacious obstacle to the practical, full scale use of micro- or nano-catalysis, and
recently the engineering community clearly defined it: there was no way to cost-efficiently immobilize large quantities
of NPs in a flow-through reactor, through which a reactant (or solution) stream may easily pass, without
entraining the particles themselves into the fluid flow. Well, now there IS a way - it has been demonstrated and
filmed: Two types of revolutionary High-Efficiency Nano-Particle Immobilization (HENCI) reactors quickly immobilize
NPs at packing densities much greater than, and without the hydrodynamic or mass transport limitations of predecessor
technologies. HENCI immobilizes micro-or nano-particles completely and homogeneously at extremely high densities
making possible for the first time the ex-situ attainment of mass transport rates (and hence observable reaction or sorption
kinetics) realizable in a stirred-batch (in situ) reactor without the need for subsequent RO/NF/MF or magnetic removal of
the nanoparticles from the product/discharge fluid. Moreover, and perhaps most notably, HENCI allows NP’s to be used
exactly as in a packed-bed reactor without ever introducing them into solution, but at very small pressure-drop per unit
flux, ushering in an era of (1) nano- and micro-catalyzed industrial- or municipal-scale chemical reactions facilitated by
reactor Conversion / Residence-time ratio orders of magnitude higher than more expensive small-particle
immobilization technologies and (2) nano- and micro-media sorption at rates orders of magnitude higher than now
achievable ex-situ. HENCI features very low Capital & Operating costs, operates at ambient P & T, requires no
chemicals, little power, can be scaled & configured for any micro- or nano-driven application, and often exposes the
reactant matrix to no additional contact materials whatsoever.

One environmental ramification of HENCI technology is that NPs can finally be cost-effectively deployed for a host of
high-throughput and/or high-conversion applications, including the large-scale remediation of waters (across the globe)
tainted with ubiquitous members of several families of recalcitrant chlorinated hydrocarbons: Combined with the efficacy of
recently developed nanoparticles for rapid and often complete conversion of at least 39 carcinogenic CHC pollutants (per
recent scientific literature) into benign species, this translates to (among other scenarios) the potential for on-demand
well-head or point-of-distribution remediation of entire aquifers, at virtually any demand rate, ushering in a new era in
environmental remediation, let alone chemical processing, and nanotechnology itself.