Ngai Yin Yip

This is Oren Herskowitz, executive director of Columbia Technology Ventures at Columbia University. Today you'll be hearing from Dr. Ngaian Yip of Columbia Earth and Environmental Engineering. Interviewed by Dr. Dvina Kuh from Columbia Tech Ventures are office, during one of our office's lunch and learn sessions. Dr. Yip's lab focuses on new ways to remove salt from hypersaline solutions to make sure that the water becomes usable again, as well as ways to recover precious resources from waste streams. He'll tell us why traditional methods of making usable water, typically via condensation, is so energy intensive, and why his approach, which he likens to using a sponge to soak up in the next spell water, is so much cheaper, less resource-hungry and more flexible. He'll also explain why this is critically important to lower the environmental impact in industrial production and mining, as well as to help ensure clean water supplies in places like Arizona and Nevada that aren't near the ocean. Finally, he'll talk about his experience launching his startup Trident DeSalination, and his lessons learned as a scientist entrepreneur. So I can kick us off. It's my pleasure to introduce Professor Ngaian Yip of the Earth and Environmental Engineering Department. So as you may have heard a little bit earlier, Yip's research focuses on developing new methods and materials for energy-efficient desalination and resource recovery from waste streams. So over the past few years, we've been working closely with Professor Yip on very exciting and versatile technique that he has developed for desalination of hyper-sailing brines. The technique is called Temperature Swing Solvent Extraction, or TSE, for short. So maybe we can start with telling everyone a little bit more about sort of, you know, what it is exactly that TSE does, you know, how does the technique work, and why is it so exciting and what can it be used for? Okay, so maybe a good starting place will be to talk a bit about how we are increasingly relying on desalination to mend our water supply strides. So how much water that we get is that that is the quantity of water. That is something that is finite. Which is a bit different from what we think of, let's say, for example, energy. We can get energy from various means, but we used to do a lot of burning of fossil fuels, and now they're switching over to using turbines and solar energy and hydroelectric and potentially in the future, fusion as well. But the water is just water. There's no substitute for it. And the quantity that we get is the quantity that we get. So they're pretty much only two other ways for us to change that equation. One is that we start to reuse more and more of it. Time to try to turn our brain we use more into a circular loop. That is known as a circular economy approach. And there are technologies to do that. I say, for example, in California, there are places where they're doing water reprimations taking this water and getting the water out from that. The other alternative will be to do desalination. Because the energy of water in the ocean. Now, we have been doing desalination. We are in society, civilization has been doing desalination for a while. Now, over half a century and we've been over the years getting very good at that for you. I tune the engineering, optimize all the processes. But what we are not able to do is to really tackle anything that is saltier than sea water. So when we do a desalination, we are good. But when there's more salt in the brine than sea water, there's where there are no good technologies out there. And what pretty much the incumbent technology for that is, it's just evaporating water and condensing it. Which is hugely, hugely energy and so on. Now, some of you might be asking why are we interested in doing something which is saltier than sea water? A couple of reasons for that. When we move away from the coast, let's say for the face of Arizona, Nevada, parts of Texas as well, there are water issues there. There are not anywhere close to the coast. So they have to turn to groundwater. They'll be studying to grow the water out. The groundwater itself has some salt. Nicely, get more and more of the water out. What is left behind is going to get salty and salty and saltier. So at some point where there are pasties, salt concentration is sea water. And now, what we have, technical technologies that we have, are no longer good for that and we are stuck. You have this giant volume of salty brine, you know where to dispose of it. And it becomes a problem. It becomes so much a problem that if there is no good solution to manage this brine, they cannot do groundwater in salination. They pretty much don't have that water supply. So there has got to be technologies that we will want to use to treat that brine. So this is where I think our technology comes in. I mentioned earlier that the way that we are currently doing it is evaporating water and condensing. So that's very energy intensive. So we wanted to go about doing that deceleration without turning liquid water into gas and then condensing it back into a liquid. But so we want to avoid that change in your face. And so the technique that we have is essentially a suitable solvent that we are using as a sponge. So you can think of this suitable solvent as a material that is very sensitive to a trigger. Now the trigger here that we are using is a temperature change. So it needs initial, you can take of it as a ground state. It likes water. So it's kind of like a dry sponge. When we take that sponge and we contact it with the brine, it's going to soak up all the water. Adjust the water. The source is going to be left behind. And now when we have the sponge right, we introduce the trigger. The property is going to change drastically. From each thing, very attracted to water. Now it doesn't like water anymore. So it's it's natural to taking the sponge and now squeezing it. So all the water that we have extracted previously gets cooled out and that's how we produce our fresh water. So during the whole process, liquid water stays as liquid water. And that's important. That allows us to overcome this whole energy and intensiveness of doing the highest and energy distribution. So that in essence is how the technology works. And I think the big takeaway there is that the approach of our technology is radically different from what is out there in the market. It's again evaporating water and condensing it. There's also no membranes as well. I mentioned seawater pixelation. The technology there is reverse osmosis. It's great but it stops working beyond seawater concentration because of the limitations of the membrane. So we did away with the need for a membrane as well. And that in essence is how the technology works. Is that a good overview of the winner? Yeah, I guess for context, could you give us an idea of what is the temperature differential that you need for your technique for TSSC versus the traditional condensation methods? Yeah, so I think another unique feature of the technologies that we can utilize is relatively mild temperature swings. So the clouds that I mentioned, why initially contact the blind, we usually do that at maximum temperature. But we can do that. 15 degree Celsius, I'm more familiar with degrees Celsius and not very high. So 15 degree Celsius, which is a cool spring day and up to even use something at 25 degrees Celsius. And we can also use lower temperatures as well. Five degrees Celsius in the five. And then for the high temperature, we go up to around 60 to 80 degrees Celsius. That is well below the boarding point of water. So this is a relatively mild temperature swing. And I think that's why it can be advantageous as well. Because now we can start to look at energy sources, most sustainable energy sources. We do not need to burn forces in the earth. For example, we can use low concentration solar collectors. We can use that heat. Bring the temperature up to around 60 to 70 or 80 degrees Celsius. And that's going to drive our whole process there. That's great. So can you tell us a little bit more about the sorts of applications where a TSSD would be particularly useful? Like what sorts of hyper saline brands in particular would be wall suited for this treatment? Right, so I think one of the practical application that was driving us to this research, to this area was when we do any research on the ground. We're going to get a lot of formation water that comes up along with it. And sometimes this formation water is mixed with other chemicals that are being used in the drilling. And most of the time, the formation water contains a lot of source. So these are hyper saline ice streams. So we're trying to move away from fossil fuels, but we're still right now, we're still completely dependent on fossil fuels, including natural gas. When we do hydraulic fracturing, when a lot of the natural gas comes out, the water comes out as well. The ratio is actually something like between one to 10 to 100 volts, once or twice. So for all these natural gas that we are producing for hydraulic fracturing, we're also producing a lot of these, we're having a lot of these water very salty blind that comes out. So our initial motivation was really to look at that, whether we can do a better job of treating it. Because eventually right now what they're doing it is they're storing them in huge ponds, and they're just sitting there now. It is very expensive to treat them at the moment. So everyone is just storing onto them. And this is something that I keep getting interest from people who are in this area. Every week or so, you know, from someone who either is operating one of these sites or has a client working on one of these sites, and they need a solution for this. But I think the technology itself is even broader. It can be more broadly applied. Going back to the example of groundwater decelerations in places Arizona and Nevada, this is a huge issue as well. This is quite well working. The US and the world of reclamation for looking at water issues in the West, and they're very interested about this. This is really the main point for that. If you do not have a good solution to manage the blind, you cannot have water and this is essential for the colony for the population in that way. Something which is perhaps a bit greener, will be looking at treating grinds for lithium production. Now, we're going to need a lot of lithium because we're going to need all these energy storage including large vehicles. The projection is somewhere around 800% growth by 2030 relative to 2020. We're going to need a whole lot more lithium. Right now, one of the main sources of lithium is coming from the lithium triangle in South America. Chile, Bolivia and Argentina. I hope I got those three countries correct. Chile right now is the main producer. What they do is effectively, the lithium is present in these blinds, like pumping it out. You're spreading this brine out in large surface area, and it's known as soft glass, and just sitting there and waiting for water to evaporate. And when sufficient water evaporates, after all the other sorts of dropouts, finally, lithium carbonate drops up from the solution. That's what they harvest and use to further process for lithium batteries. So there is a ginormous area. The huge land use is very slow production. The water stays there for something like 18 months. Now, we could potentially come in and speed up the whole process. So just letting nature very slowly and very gradually that way of the water off, we can actively sponge out the water, accelerate the whole process, and precipitate the produced lithium in a much more efficient engineer way. So it seems like this is really a sort of platform technology that has a lot of broad applications. And I'm glad you mentioned the sort of number of inquiries that we've been consistently getting. For this technology, I think ever since that 2019 paper first came out, I think at one point we counted right, and there was inquiries from every continent, other than Antarctica at this point. Maybe we didn't update that. But it's been incredible. The sort of outpouring of interest we've seen. I think it would be interesting for folks to hear about, sort of what was the thought process or selection process in, you know, there's all these potential applications, all this interest from different sort of commercial, and it entities, potential end users. You know, how did you go about sort of figuring out, you know, what was the right, who was the right partner to work with on commercializing this technology? Thank you. That's wow. Yeah, I think that's a fantastic question. I think the candy answer here, because this is something that I'm still trying to figure out as well. This is not commercializing the technology from our lab, bringing that to the market. It's not something we've done before. So this is my first rodeo as well. And as good engineers, we know a bit about the technology from the market as well. I think it's taken some classes with a couple of votes. So it's kind of a high level. You know, some of these things. A lot of these is also beginning out on the fly. What is going to work, what is not going to work. And I think, I thought, from my perspective on my own experience, being able to have that good working relationship with the people who are spearheading the commercialization efforts is important, to be able to be equal partners in it. It's weird in the way I'm saying equal partners, because I'm not afraid of equal partners. I have no equity in the company. I don't stand to benefit directly. The company does fantastic financially. You know, some benefits, but they're kind of like an indirect. But to have that, it's kind of like that equal partner and have both parties value each others input in the process. I think it's important. Even though I'm not officially part of the company, I'm not officially part of the company. I'm not officially part of the company. I'm not officially part of the company. I'm not officially part of the company. I'm not officially part of the company. I'm not officially part of the company. 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So, we're also looking at possibly going after some of these funding from their agencies that pretty much are killing three birds with a stone. We are bringing in money to do further research on this, where at the same time, bringing, during that relationship with the potential clients, someone who actually has produced water, and we can show that we can treat this, and we can then solve still problems, so that's the practical skill of the Department of Energy is interested in as well. And at the same time, there's also, we are outside of all these better funding. The company has been actively in contact with potential clients, the US, IBM, they're using for produce water, in Canada for related water issues, and even in US, North Africa, South Africa as well. And the emails that we're getting in VD is international we get. We get emails from people from everywhere, Australia, included as well. So that has been what the CEO has been up to. That's great. Do you, what do you think the sort of first application or sort of pilot scale demonstration is likely to be? I think it's going to happen soon. I hope in the next two years, we are, we are also in this American mid-hero ex-challenge is not exactly showing what is the agency running, but it's definitely better where they pretty much put out, it's kind of like SpaceX, but not for space challenge. They have a challenge, they put it out there, and whoever wants to submit a solution, who are part of the challenge related to rounds and belief in the water finance or semi-finance. And part of that is to design and eventually be taught pilot plan. So we're in the process of that. And this is where we're calling things to apply. We're going to supply us with the water that we want to treat. We're engineering from the cells. We're going to help design and operate the pilot plan. And I hope it's going to come soon. It's probably going to be in the premium basin or maybe in Texas. We're going to figure out the logistics for that. And this is so part of the solar driven, this animation so large you very much want to treat. So the combining that with the solar collector. So over arching idea there is too basically, think this into a little carbon footprint, very sustainable process. That's really exciting. I think with the last couple of minutes, we can open it up for questions. I see you weren't had a question. I'll just read it out loud. So how's the process of being the scientist entrepreneur gone for you at Columbia? Columbia been supportive of your efforts so far. And any advice to other scientists entrepreneurs? I think my department has been very supportive. I think the school of engineering has been very supportive. I think the. The framework that the university has put in place, I think a lot of things are really mean on CKB, for the expertise to hold my hand, to work through this process. I'm trained as a scientist, not as a startup tech person. So there are a lot of things I admit, I've already admit, I do not know. And I'm happily positive to the experts to actually deal with it. So I think that has been great. I think what is also interesting is, I've been visiting a couple of universities as part of the whole lecture circuit, like we're not telling everyone the work that we do. And because some of these conversations, we are into commercialization of technologies that are discovered in the lab. And this is where I learned that different universities have very different norms, say, for example, in the Columbia, they're very clear and straight, focus of interest guidelines, which means to say that, if I'm going to be, meeting a lab, clean research, the research, if I'm working, the research I'm doing is on this technology. I cannot have any commercial connections, commercial highs that I can potentially benefit from, but I perform based on the technology. And that means that the startup company, Trident, I have zero equity in it. And that's what it means. Because I'm still interested in doing the research. When this test was going to be hopefully getting tenure and eventually allow me to keep my job and keep doing the size that I do. But that means that I have to focus that part. And there's no always the same for other places. There are other institutes that are much more open. You can actually do both. So I think those are some questions. Food port out. Maybe this is a while above my pay grade. Yeah, and I think overall it's been a good process. So here's my very supportive being the reasons of the time and effort that I can actually spare for such efforts and really take a huge, huge burden of when I allow me to focus really on what is my primary role as a researcher, as the PI of my lab. And really do what I need to do to get a research out there and publish papers and write for courses and all of that. So I think that has been good. Any advice to other scientists entrepreneurs? I think that if there is, if there is a technology data, that they are really passionate in ambitious, find a way to get it out to the market. I think I see this quite often in academia as well as us being in academia in the labs. There are so focus on publishing papers and economic conferences. They have reduced that connection to what the university caused the fourth purpose, right? It's making a real impact on the world. I think that is important. So I think that is also a big motivator for me to keep doing the work that we do in our lab. I think it's also a great tool to improve students as well. I think more and more I think are the same students who want to do research and want to do the science. But at the same time, we also want to see that the science indirectly can make an impact on the world. Yeah, absolutely. One more question. What else might we do to help scientists entrepreneurs along their journey to commercialization on their technologies? The conflict of interest management is part of that process, but are there other resources that we can help with? I think Colombia is doing a pretty good job for me as a tenetrop professor. What I have to do every year is know as the annual summary and absolutely dread it. It's coming up soon. I have to fill out this, something like a 30-page document of what I did in the past year. Basically, justifying what I did is good work and should be considered for my repassion. As part of that, for the school of engineering, they actually include things like commercialization technologies, patterns filed, startups and things like that. This is recognitions of the work that we do just beyond publishing papers and attending academic conferences. I think that is tremendously helpful. I also have a colleague who told me once a month or maybe it was one year of sabbatical. But to be involved in a startup company looking at greener ways to produce aluminum. So there's another example of how we can provide support to our faculty members to really be able to spend time and resources to do some of these things, and that some of these things are building the technologies to the market.