53 nanotimes News in Brief

New Approach to Water Desalination

MIT researchers in Boston, USA, have come up with a new approach using a different kind of filtration material: sheets of graphene.The researcher show that nanometer-scale pores in single-layer freestanding graphene can effectively filter NaCl salt from water. Using classical molecular dynamics, they report the desalination performance of such membranes as a function of pore size, chemical functionalization, and applied pressure. Their results indicate that the membrane’s ability to prevent the salt passage depends critically on pore diameter with adequately sized pores allowing for water flow while blocking ions.

David Cohen-Tanugi and Jeffrey C. Grossman: Water Desalination across Nanoporous Graphene, In: Nano Letters ASAP, June 05, 2012, DOI:10.1021/nl3012853: http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/nl3012853

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5Tjy_90WBU