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

The efficacy of nano-scale catalysts (NCs) for in-situ remediation of various recalcitrant, carcinogenic groundwater
pollutants has been well documented. The desire to utilize these highly effective catalysts ex-situ for a growing list of full-
scale environmental and chemical-processing applications has been a natural consequence, and recently the engineering
community identified the last remaining obstacle: there was no way to cost-efficiently immobilize large quantities of
NCs in a flow-through reactor, through which polluted water(or any reactant stream) may easily pass, without
entraining the particles themselves into the reactant flow. Well, now there IS a way - it has been demonstrated and
filmed: Two types of revolutionary High-Efficiency Nano-Catalyst Immobilization (HENCI) reactors quickly immobilize
NCs at packing densities much greater than, and without the hydrodynamic or mass transport limitations of predecessor
technologies. HENCI immobilizes micro-or nano-catalysts 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 kinetics)
realizable in a stirred-batch (in situ) reactor without the need for subsequent RO/NF removal of the nanocatalyst from the
product fluid. Moreover, and perhaps most notably, HENCI allows NC’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 nano-
catalyzed industrial- or municipal-scale chemical reactions facilitated by reactor Conversion / Residence-time ratio
orders of magnitude higher than more expensive small-catalyst immobilization technologies. 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-catalyzed application, and often exposes the reactant matrix to no additional contact
materials.

The result of HENCI is that NCs 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
nanocatalysts 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.