News - April 25, 2018 - by Ray Hagar

By Ray Hagar
Nevada Newsmakers

Nanotechnology could soon help clean up almost all of the dirty water in Northern Nevada, making it safe to drink, Lance Gilman, the partner broker of the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Complex, said Tuesday on Nevada Newsmakers.

"Think in terms, for a minute, of being able to take all the water that is here and literally, effectively and competitively, clean it to drinking water standards," Gilman said, adding the new technology could also clean wastewater from households.

"Everything," he said, "including salt water."

Gilman sees many benefits to Northern Nevada water systems with nanotechnology, an engineering science that deals with matter on the atomic, molecular, and supra-molecular scale. .

"What happens to cleaning up the Carson River for example?" he asked. "What happens to using the reservoir out in Silver Springs, Lanhontan for example? The (nano) technology can completely change our water position here in Northern Nevada."

The breakthrough in nanotechnology would certainly help Gilman's top tenants at TRI, including Tesla, Switch, Apple and Google, because those plants need large amounts in their applications. A nanotechnology campus is also planned at TRI.

"If you take Switch, if you take Google, or Apple for example, they have a lot of water that has been exhausted and that they use a number of times," Gilman said. "And it needs to be cleaned up in an efficient and competitive way. Now all of a sudden, here comes nanotechnology.

"I have always been of the belief that our water resources will be enhanced by research, development and new technology and it is here today," Gilman said. "I have seen it."

Nano membranes developed from research projects at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University show that organic material and bacteria are instantly killed when they come into contact with the nano-membranes, according to published reports.

"They are looking at a very special technology that is a nano membrane that you put in, in conjunction to an operating sewer treatment plant, and or a river cleanup or anything else that you want to clean up in water," Gilman said. "And instead of doing reverse osmosis, which is very expensive and comes with a high level of oversight, all of a sudden it appears that this nanotechnology membrane is going to change how we process our water."

Gilman said Stanford University is a West Coast center for nanotechnology research, whose applications are seemingly limitless.

"We have some phenomenal things happening at Stanford, a lot of research and development projects," Gilman said. "And a lot of folks say what is a nano-product? An example is buildings are limited in Dubai in their height because tensile strength of steel. The nano products are three to five times stronger than steel. So all of a sudden, high rises in the world today can go much higher. Now they are limited by the tensile strength. Nanotechnology can be very thin and wrap automobiles. It has a lot of military uses.

"So when you drill down and ask where nano-products are coming, it is across the board. It includes military and consumer products, all of those things," he said.