Transforming seawater into drinking water with a graphene sieve? They have succeeded. A team of scientists from the University of Manchester (United Kingdom) has managed to create graphene oxide membranes that do not enlarge in contact with water and that are capable of sifting common salts. Transforming seawater into drinking water could provide this precious asset to millions of people on the planet who have difficulty accessing adequate sources of clean water.
The expertly designed graphene sieve pores are so small that it can be precisely controlled down to the atomic scale, making it possible to screen common salts. These graphene oxide membranes developed at the National Graphene Institute have already demonstrated the potential to filter out small nanoparticles, organic molecules, and even large salts.
Until now, however, common salts could not be sifted because they required even smaller sieves and the membranes swelled when immersed in water, so the smaller salts still leaked out along with the water.
To solve this problem, the scientists devised a strategy to avoid inflammation of the membrane when exposed to water. In this way, by filtering the salty water, it is already safe to drink, since even the tiniest salts are trapped in this filter, since the size of the pores can be controlled with great precision to be able to separate the salt dissolved in water. or ions and molecules, adjusting the size to that of these particles.
“The realization of scalable membranes with uniform pore size at the atomic scale is an important step forward and will open new possibilities to improve the efficiency of desalination technology “, explains Rahul Nair, co-author of the work.
Scientists hope to create these graphene oxide membranes on smaller scales in order to make available to countries that do not have the financial infrastructure for a large-scale desalination plant, a way to have safe and accessible fresh water.
Desalination technologies have become an imperative with reduced water supplies due to the effects of climate change.
The study has been published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
