A Graphene Based Filtration Technique May Solve The World's Drinking Water Problem

Even in 2017, as many as 1.8 billion people across the world don¡¯t have access to safe drinking water. While seas and oceans are massive reservoirs of salty water, how do we make it less salty and safe for drinking?

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That question has kept many of our best minds busy, and scientists from the University of Manchester may have found an ingenious solution to rapidly convert salty water into drinking water -- with the help of graphene.

What¡¯s graphene? Graphene is nothing but a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice, and as a material graphene holds a lot of promise because despite its thin layer graphene exhibits amazing tensile strength and is super sensitive in conducting electricity.

How¡¯s graphene helping us solve the world¡¯s drinking water problem?

Graphene, according to the researchers at the University of Manchester, has exhibited another impressive characteristics. Through a graphene-oxide membrane that the researchers have developed, a sieve can be designed with uniform pore size that is capable of filtering out even the smallest salts appearing in sea water -- without affecting the flow of water flowing through the sieve.

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If implemented on a large scale, this graphene-oxide membrane based sieve can be deployed at some of the most remotest parts of the world, where clean and safe drinking water supply doesn¡¯t exist. As long as they¡¯re close to the sea, this graphene-based filtration technique can potentially unlock an unlimited supply of drinking water to anyone in the world.

Reporting their results in the science journal Nature Nanotechnology, the research team who came up with the graphene-based sieve idea claim that the filtration membrane can reject as much as 97 percent of dissolved salt and still allow free flow of water through it.

While this is a great development, clearly more work is needed to realize the dream of large scale graphene-oxide filters being deployed to de-salinate the seas and oceans of the world and solve the looming water crisis heading our civilization¡¯s way.