Water covers most of the planet but is full of salt: difficult to make it drinkable.
today graphene (we all know its great properties) could provide a solution to the problem.
A team of researchers from the University of Manchester has developed a special membrane equipped with 'scalable' pores and capable of filtering even the most infinitesimal salts.
Current salinization plants operate slowly and laboriously. On the contrary, graphene behaves like a real sponge that absorbs salt water and releases it filtered.
The particular conformation produces "meshes" so narrow that more than 97% of the sodium ions do not pass through. In fact, it is pure water. Drinking.
With similar technology, water would no longer be a depleting resource.
Scalability: a crucial factor of the graphene membrane
“The creation of a graphene membrane at a near-atomic scale is a significant step forward and opens up brand new possibilities for improving the efficiency of desalination technologies,” says Professor Rahul Nair, co-author of the research. “This is the first effective experiment that demonstrates how many possibilities there are to apply this approach and produce graphene membranes of the most disparate sizes on a large scale.”
Scalability is one of the key factors. It can lead to water purifiers that can radically change living conditions in countries with limited access to fresh water.
“They won't just be useful for desalination,” says Jijo Abraham, another co-author. He adds: “In the long term, scalable graphene membranes will lead to different types of filters to purify different types of substances.”
The research was published in the scientific journal Nature Nanotechnology.
Source: University of manchester