Nanoporous membranes for waste heat harvesting

Li, Samy and Laurent have just published a paper entitled "Understanding Fast and Robust Thermo-Osmotic Flows through Carbon Nanotube Membranes: Thermodynamics Meets Hydrodynamics" in the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters. Heat management is one of the crucial challenges faced by society. Could nanoporous membranes be used to harvest waste heat? In this Letter, the authors address this question by combining analytical modeling and atomistic simulations, focusing on model membranes built from carbon nanotubes. They show that when such membranes are submitted to temperature differences, extremely fast and robust flows can be produced, which could be used for pumping or desalination applications. In contrast with standard models, they show that the performance of the membrane depends crucially on hydrodynamics in the pore and at the entrances. Their model could be used to guide the search for other efficient membranes for waste heat harvesting.