Newsfacts:
- New research shows graphene can filter common salts from water to make it safe to drink
- Findings could lead to affordable desalination technology
Graphene-oxide membranes have attracted considerable attention as promising candidates for new filtration technologies. Now the much sought-after development of making membranes capable of sieving common salts has been achieved.
New research demonstrates the real-world potential of providing clean drinking water for millions of people who struggle to access adequate clean water sources.
The new findings from a group of scientists at The University of Manchester were published today in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. Previously graphene-oxide membranes have shown exciting potential for gas separation and water filtration.
Graphene-oxide membranes developed at the National Graphene Institute have already demonstrated the potential of filtering out small nanoparticles, organic molecules, and even large salts. Until now, however, they couldn’t be used for sieving common salts used in desalination technologies, which require even smaller sieves.
Previous research at The University of Manchester found that if immersed in water, graphene-oxide membranes become slightly swollen and smaller salts flow through the membrane along with water, but larger ions or molecules are blocked.
The Manchester-based group have now further developed these graphene membranes and found a strategy to avoid the swelling of the membrane when exposed to water. The pore size in the membrane can be precisely controlled which can sieve common salts out of salty water and make it safe to drink.
Realisation of scalable membranes with uniform pore size down to atomic scale is a significant step forward and will open new possibilities for improving the efficiency of desalination technology.
Professor Rahul Raveendran Nair
As the effects of climate change continue to reduce modern city’s water supplies, wealthy modern countries are also investing in desalination technologies. Following the severe floods in California major wealthy cities are also looking increasingly to alternative water solutions.
When the common salts are dissolved in water, they always form a ‘shell’ of water molecules around the salts molecules. This allows the tiny capillaries of the graphene-oxide membranes to block the salt from flowing along with the water. Water molecules are able to pass through the membrane barrier and flow anomalously fast which is ideal for application of these membranes for desalination.
Professor Rahul Nair, at The University of Manchester said: “Realisation of scalable membranes with uniform pore size down to atomic scale is a significant step forward and will open new possibilities for improving the efficiency of desalination technology.
“This is the first clear-cut experiment in this regime. We also demonstrate that there are realistic possibilities to scale up the described approach and mass produce graphene-based membranes with required sieve sizes.”
Mr. Jijo Abraham and Dr. Vasu Siddeswara Kalangi were the joint-lead authors on the research paper: “The developed membranes are not only useful for desalination, but the atomic scale tunability of the pore size also opens new opportunity to fabricate membranes with on-demand filtration capable of filtering out ions according to their sizes.” said Mr. Abraham.
By 2025 the UN expects that 14% of the world’s population will encounter water scarcity. This technology has the potential to revolutionise water filtration across the world, in particular in countries which cannot afford large scale desalination plants.
It is hoped that graphene-oxide membrane systems can be built on smaller scales making this technology accessible to countries which do not have the financial infrastructure to fund large plants without compromising the yield of fresh water produced.
[osd_subscribe categories=’graphene-oxide-fibers’ placeholder=’Email Address’ button_text=’Subscribe Now for any new posts on the topic “GRAPHENE OXIDE FIBERS”‘]
The Latest on: Graphene oxide fibers
[google_news title=”” keyword=”graphene oxide fibers” num_posts=”10″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]
via Google News
The Latest on: Graphene oxide fibers
- Surface oxygen functionality controls selective transport of metal ions through graphene oxide membraneson July 25, 2024 at 12:50 pm
Graphene oxide (GO) membranes have shown promise for separating ions from mixed solutions based on size. While previous work used GO membranes for size-based separations, UV light ...
- Graphene Plasmon: NTT and Univ. of Tokyo Control THz-Region for High-Speed Signal Processingon July 24, 2024 at 9:13 am
NTT Corporation and The University of Tokyo announced they have generated and controlled graphene plasmon wave packets with a pulse width of 1.2 picoseconds. They said this offers a novel approach to ...
- Screening biotoxin aptamer and their application of optical aptasensor in food stuff: a reviewon July 24, 2024 at 12:44 am
Biotoxins are ranges of toxic substances produced by animals, plants, and microorganisms, which could contaminate foods during their production, processing, ...
- New material derived from graphene improves the performance of neuroprostheseson July 10, 2024 at 11:30 am
After an amputation or a severe nerve injury, patients lose to a greater or lesser extent the ability to move and feel a lost limb, which limits their autonomy in activities of daily living. Currently ...
- Graphene articles from across Nature Portfolioon July 7, 2024 at 5:00 pm
The tunable properties of graphene oxide-based electrodes can selectively trigger these calcium signalling responses. Rhombohedral graphene is an emerging material with a rich correlated-electron ...
- New strategy to obtain carbon nanotube fibers with higher dynamic strengthon June 26, 2024 at 5:01 pm
Jian Muqiang from Peking University and the Beijing Graphene Institute and others developed a strategy to fabricate carbon nanotube fibers with the dynamic strength up to 14 GPa. Lightweight and ...
- Study explores high-performance copper/graphene composite conductor for motorson June 23, 2024 at 5:00 pm
Effective combination of the above methods and feasible plastic processing can result in high-quality copper/graphene composite wires. The study shows good application advantages at temperatures ...
- Fabulous Fibers: The Chemistry of Fabrics!on August 6, 2022 at 7:11 pm
Notice the strings that are woven or knitted together to make the fabric. These strings are called yarns. Each yarn is made of many fibers twisted together. Each fiber is made of very long molecules ...
- Graphene Oxide In Pfizer Covid-19 Vaccines? Here Are The Latest Unsupported Claimson July 10, 2021 at 1:54 pm
One example of such a claim was an Instagram post that stated: “99% Graphene Oxide in Pfizer V4X? Spanish scientists obtain vial of Pfizer v4xin3 and find that 98-99%.” In this case ...
via Bing News
