Sunchem is developing leaching and Nano Filter technologies for the precision separation of critical metals. For high-value markets such as water purification, energy, and critical metals, these technologies replace inadequate separation technologies that are not selective, foul easily, and are environmentally unfriendly.
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Daniel T. Sun
Daniel T. Sun is a San Francisco Bay Area native and the founder of Sunchem. He received his B.S. in chemistry at Loyola Marymount University in 2013 and his Ph.D. in chemistry and chemical engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne in 2020. His objective is to revolutionize how critical metals are purified while also providing clean drinking water using Nano Filters.
TECHNOLOGY
Critical Need
Heavy metals are toxic and can harm ecosystems and public health. But this class of materials also includes metals that are critical to the clean-energy transition, such as precious, rare earth, and energy-relevant metals. These metals are extremely valuable and have significant economic relevance—industries rely on them for manufacturing everything from batteries to modern electronics to solar cells. Unfortunately, existing metal-filtration technologies often fail to extract and sort trace amounts of these metals from complex water mixtures, allowing them to enter the environment through wastewater from mining operations or manufacturing facilities. Industries need to adopt cost-effective metal separation technologies for a sustainable and environmentally safe future.
Technology Vision
Sunchem’s Nano Filter technology is based on a proprietary chemical platform that hybridizes nanoporous materials and polymeric building blocks. The hybrid materials are extremely porous resulting in high capacities, rapid removal rates, and unprecedented selectivity. Each Nano Filter is tuned to remove a specific metal from complex water mixtures. Sunchem offers a cost-effective, bolt-on system to decontaminate heavy metals from water and/or concentrate critical metals from wastewater streams that would ultimately be lost.
Potential for Impact
Water contamination resulting from extractive operations and manufacturing systems is a worldwide problem, but Sunchem’s Nano Filter technology can provide industries with a cost-effective and energy-efficient approach to improving water quality while also capturing value from their waste streams. This technology has the potential to revolutionize how critical metals are sourced and purified while it protects downstream communities from toxic water pollution.