Minitrends Resources: Nanotechnology Trends

by Steve O'Keefe on September 29, 2010

There are many ways to discover Minitrends, and one of the best is by attending trade conferences where companies looking for capital boast about their breakthroughs. Next Monday and Tuesday, September 27-28, NanoBusiness 2010 will take place at Chicago’s McCormick Place. This is the ninth annual NanoBusiness conference and trade show.

The show is stocked with over a dozen keynote speakers, mostly leaders of nanotechnology businesses including:

• Fabien Cousteau, Explorer & Aquatic Environmentalist
• William Moffitt, President & CEO of Nanosphere
• Sean Murdock, CEO & Founder of Nanosonix
• George Thompson, Government Programs Manager, Intel
• George M. Scalise, President, Semiconductor Industry Association
• Mark LeChevallier, Ph.D., Director, Innovation & Environmental Stewards, American Water
• Dr. Michael H. Shapiro, Deputy Assistant Administrator, U.S. EPA’s Office of Water

The guest list reflects one of the focal points of this year’s conference: water treatment. Water filtration is a major growth area for nanotechnology, especially desalination (filtering salt water to make it drinkable). Nanotechnology and Development News, a publication from the Meridian Institute, reports that “nano-engineered and bio-mimetic membranes are the best hope for bringing down the price of desalinated water.”

Water treatment offers many emerging Minitrends for astute investors and entrepreneurs. Global desalination capacity is expected to double in the next six years. While improvements in technology have been lowering costs, stricter environmental concerns have increased costs of building plants. Christopher Gasson, the editor of a newly-released forecast and analysis of global desalination projects published by Global Water Intelligence, is upbeat about the trend:

In the longer term the price of desalination will continue to fall: there has been an acceleration in the rate of investment in new technologies.

Nanotechnology and Development News is only one of many great resources available from the Meridian Institute for those interested in unearthing Minitrends in nanotechnology. The Institute’s website offers reports on international nanotechnology meetings and contains contact information for many influential players in nanotech. While organizations such as the Global Water Intelligence charge thousands of dollars to access their reports, Meridian makes much of its content available free of charge.

by Steve O’Keefe
News Editor, Minitrends Blog

Source: “Environmental Concerns Set New Price Challenge For Desalination,” Nanotechnology and Development News, 09/14/10
Source: “Program,” NanoBusiness Conference 2010, 09/10
Source: “Nanotechnology Resources,” Meridian Institute
Image by Greg Riegler, used under Creative Commons License.

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