Naked Science Forum

Non Life Sciences => Chemistry => Topic started by: thedoc on 21/07/2012 02:30:01

Title: Could graphene be used to desalinate seawater?
Post by: thedoc on 21/07/2012 02:30:01

Martin Kilgore  asked the Naked Scientists:
   
Dear Dr. Chris.

I heard the show (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/podcasts/) about graphene allowing separation of water and ethanol.

Could it be used to desalinate seawater cheaply? That might be nice, don't you think?

Can you point me toward the people who did this study or forward this to them please?

Thank you,

Martin Kilgore

What do you think?

Title: Re: Could graphene be used to desalinate seawater?
Post by: evan_au on 21/07/2012 12:17:47

The recent announcement was from a team of M.I.T. researchers, including Jeffrey Grossman and David Cohen-Tanugi.
Their paper is in a journal called Nano Letters, but you need to pay to view it: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nl3012853

An article summarising it: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=graphene-desalination-water-crisis
A youtube computer simulation of how it could work: