Non-Equilibrium Dissipative-Flow 3D-Printed Porous Heavy-Metal Capture and Recovery

PROBLEM: 3D-printed porous scaffolds offer architected pore networks that can be functionalised after printing, but under flow the network creates dissipative channels and dead zones that batch tests never see. A printed geometry that looks ideal on screen may channel flow past most of its biosorbent.

SOLUTION: IBM Cloud Ideas would host a proposal capability for dissipative-flow printed capture scaffolds, requiring the printed pore architecture, post-print functionalisation, DFT binding basis, flow regime, and regeneration energy to be submitted together. Review would focus on whether flow-state evidence, not only batch isotherms, supports the design.

EVIDENCE BASIS: DOCUMENTED — Non-equilibrium thermodynamics / dissipative structures, Source: Prigogine, Nobel Prize 1977. DFT via Kohn–Sham equations predicts surface-group binding (Hohenberg–Kohn 1964, Kohn–Sham 1965, Nobel 1998); biosorption isotherms qe = (C0 − Ce)V/m, Langmuir/Freundlich, are textbook DOCUMENTED. 3D-printed porous scaffolds provide architected pore networks, print-then-functionalize.