Canadian Space Agency provides $200,000 grant to Waterloo spin-out Qidni Labs for nano-filter technology.

Qidni Labs, a spin-out of Waterloo University, has secured the backing of Canada’s Space Agency for nano-filters able to stop viruses and bacteria in the air, liquid, and food. The startup landed a $200,000 grant for the technology, which was originally designed to filter blood in people suffering from kidney failure, and could be an alternative to expensive dialysis treatment. The Canadian Space Agency believes the same technology can be used to clean the air inside of aircraft, keeping fluids clean, and ensuring astronaut food is free of infections. Morteza Ahmadi, Qidni Labs CEO, said: “Space is a harsh environment and making devices and instruments suitable for this type of environment is not easy. So we want to be able to control not only the pore size of the filter in the nanometre range, but also to make them robust. The size of bacteria is within 100 to a few hundred nanometres. The size of the smallest virus would be two or three nanometres. So if we can make pores smaller than that size, let’s say we can make pores within the one-to-10-nanometre range, then you would be able to block the passage of bacteria and viruses with your filter.”

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