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US 2014/0190889 A1Published application
Combined acoustic micro filtration and phononic crystal membrane particle separation
AssigneeFloDesign Sonics, Inc.
InventorsEdward A. Rietman, Bart Lipkens, Jason Dionne
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A system is provided that includes one or more acoustic microfilters through which is flowed a mixture of a fluid and a particulate to selectively filter particles from the fluid. Also included are one or more phononic crystal units coupled to the acoustic microfilter(s) to further selectively filter particles from the fluid. Related apparatus, systems, techniques and articles are also described.
Claims15
A method of desalinating water, comprising:
- creating an engineered acoustic field, wherein the engineered acoustic field creates high pressure regions and low pressure regions;
- and
- positioning at least one of the high pressure regions so as to force salinated water through at least one acoustic microfilter and subsequently through at least one phononic crystal unit fluidly coupled to the at least one acoustic microfilter, wherein the at least one phononic crystal unit comprises an array of parallel spaced hollow tubes, each tube being surrounded by a desalination membrane, the array of tubes being positioned in the direction of flow, the spaces between the tubes forming an interstitial region, the desalination membranes thereby separating solutes from the water to desalinate the water.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.