Nanobubbles 101 course launched to accelerate energy industry understanding of transformative technology

People working in the energy and water tech sectors are being invited to learn about the potential of nanobubbles to amplify the productivity of a range of industrial processes, with the launch of a new self-led audio course on nanobubbles called "Nanobubbles 101".

Nanobubbles are tiny gas bubbles, invisible to the eye, on the nanometre (nm) scale. Nanobubble-generation technology is expected to deliver productivity gains in the energy sector across a range of applications, including, amongst others, enhanced oil recovery (EOR), fuel enhancement, onshore and offshore water treatment, biofuel production and environmental remediation, for example, for produced-water treatment and demineralisation, as well as algae regulation.

To help accelerate global understanding of what nanobubbles are and why they are important, Dublin-based university professor and entrepreneur Professor Niall English has created an introductory course on the technology. The course has been published in podcast-form to enable easy access internationally, and the seven-episode series is designed to increase understanding of the technology - with a particular focus on the energy and water sectors.

The small size of nanobubbles gives them distinct properties that are potentially transformative for a wide range of industrial applications. These properties include long-time metastability, high surface area-to-volume ratio, and slow rising velocity.

The potential of nanobubbles has been known for some time, but the barrier to widespread adoption has been the challenge of developing energy-efficient, controllable, reliable generation. Recent breakthroughs mean that nanobubble technology is expected to have a transformative impact on disparate sectors, including, among other things, water treatment, energy, algae control, carbon capture, agriculture and aquaculture.

Prof. English is CTO of AquaB Nanobubble Innovations Ltd, a University College Dublin (UCD) spin-out company which is commercialising electric-field nanobubble generation technology. AquaB's nanobubble generators utilise a novel method to generate high concentrations nanobubbles using static electric fields, which was lead-invented by Prof. English. The Nanobubbles 101 audio course has been developed by AquaB, informed by feedback from industry insiders.

Commenting on its launch, Prof. Niall English said:
"There are a very broad range of applications of nanobubbles, both upstream and downstream, in the energy industry. For example, the incorporation of nanobubbles can improve well stimulation and increase the extraction of oil and gas, whilst reducing the environmental impact. Nanobubbles can also become carriers for chemical absorbents or scavengers that selectively capture toxic and corrosive gases, such as hydrogen sulphide (H2S) and carbon dioxide (CO2) from gas streams or aqueous solutions. The potential for innovative applications of this technology is truly exciting.

"With nanobubble-generator technology now becoming more widely available, I felt there was a need to make sure key decision-makers in industry have a way of understanding the science behind nanobubbles. By making that scientific explanation freely available, my hope is that engineers and innovators in industry will grasp the potential for this technology in their respective industries and start to apply it. That's what Nanobubbles 101 offers to the listener."

Prof. English is an internationally recognised expert in how external fields affect the ordering and behaviour of systems at the nanoscale, and his research interests encompass nanoscience, electric-field effects, nanobubbles, carbon capture and gas hydrates. In September 2023, he was announced as a recipient of a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant, worth upwards of €2.5 million, for a project called NIMBLE which will investigate how the characteristics of electric-field-generated nanobubbles and nanodroplets can be controlled and optimised.

He added:
"The real opportunities for nanobubble technology will only be realised if industry understands the potential and innovates to develop transformative use cases for it. This is a very young industry, and we are only at the very early stages of understanding the longer-term potential of nanobubbles for industry and for our planet."

Nanobubble 101 can be found on all major podcast platforms, including Apple, Spotify and Audible. The course can also be found on AquaB's website www.aquab.com and at www.nanobubbles101.com .

Some excerpts from the podcast below:

Intro Ep 1: "And this was the most exhilarating moment of my professional career, that sudden cartoon-like vision I just saw in pictures and saw pictures of tiny bubbles shorter than the wavelength of light, which couldn't be seen by the naked eye"

Energy Ep 6: "One of the most important environmental contributions and sustainability contributions that we can make now in the first half of our century is to make oil and gas more environmentally sustainable. And I think that Nanobubbles, from what I've seen and the work that I've been doing, and I think that others are doing, I really think that Nanobubbles can contribute a very great deal to this, to really reduce the carbon and environmental footprint of the energy industry…

"For example, if we're able to put nanobubbles into the frac fluids or frac juice, as it's known colloquially, we can improve the level of oil recovery and we can also do well stimulation. So if nanobubbles are in the frac juice that's pumped and the high pressure pumped down into the well, then there's two main drivers. One is thermodynamic whilst the other is kinetic, I suppose. In the kinetic case, we can reduce the surface tension of the water carrying the nanobubbles alongside any surfactants, acids and so forth. And this can then penetrate the rock sediment matrix much more easily into the pore structure to try to dislodge any intercalated oil or gas or hydrocarbon therein. Secondly, there's a thermodynamic aspect that can effectively shift the thermodynamic phase diagram goalposts by having extra dissolved gas in the form of nanobubbles like CO2.

"Now, another clearly attractive prospect, in fact, Holy Grail one might call it, would be can we get more damn oil or gas out of the ground in terms of a higher yield per se? And that's something that I am very excited about. And there's some evidence that this can indeed be the case, if done under the correct and appropriate conditions. Being able to do so in a cost-effective and reproducible way, in a consistent way, is of course very important. And that's really in the art of nanobubble engineering…"

Episode Titles
• Episode 1: An Introduction to Nanobubbles
• Episode 2: The Science of Nanobubbles
• Episode 3: Applications of Nanobubbles
• Episode 4: Generating Nanobubbles
• Episode 5: Nanobubbles in Water
• Episode 6: Nanobubbles for the Energy Industry
• Episode 7: The Future Potential of Nanobubbles

Postal Address: AquaB Nanobubble Innovations Ltd. Old Mill Industrial Estate, Kill,
Naas, Kildare W91 KFV4 Ireland

Media Contact: Lorna Young lorna@indigowords.co.uk

AquaB Nanobubble Innovations Ltd develops, manufactures and sells ultra-efficient, electric-field based nanobubble generators, optimised for the planet's most important industries.
AquaB Nanobubble Innovations Ltd is Co-Funded by the EU, having been awarded a European Innovation Council Accelerator grant in 2022 to support the ongoing commercialisation of its nanobubble generation technology.
While nanobubbles have widespread applications across multiple global industries, AquaB's priority market is water gasification and treatment, especially in the energy sector and for algae regulation.

This release was published on openPR.