Better Watermakers in the future?

Interesting

kev_rm said:

Graphene sieve makes seawater potable - UPI.com

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But what is the advantage?
If less pressure or cheaper then good.
We already have membranes, are these going to last longer?
The article gives no info.

Here's some additional info:

Scientists have invented a graphene-based sieve that turns seawater into drinking water - ScienceAlert

I'm of the opinion that graphene will not only change water-making but material science in pretty much every field. Nice to see it being applied.

I've been hearing about graphene for a while now. Are there any real world applications in use yet?

It seems the problem is scaling up production to an industrial scale.

Nothing in the article made me believe new graphene membranes are just around the corner. Beyond manufacturing cost, there are number of other "what if's" that still need to be answered.

How quickly will they become plugged up? How will the sandwich material required to keep them in shape hold up? Will they be cheaper? Will they last longer? Will they require lower pressure?

I'd love to see a cheaper, easier to maintain watermaker. I'm not holding my breath.

It is a huge step from a laboratory test to profitable production.

Big question is what kind of differential pressure will it take for this new membrane to function? I read a long time ago that the dp was related more to physics and not so much classical engineering flow dynamics. Read quite a bit about it, remember no more than that last sentence.

So will this operate like a funnel with a coffee filter in it? Or need lots of bar to push it through??

Conceptually I believe a near perfectly sized sieve is going to be a lot more efficient than RO. Agreed just in the lab at this point.. but promising (and not just for boating either.. lots of communities would massively benefit from cheap desal)

kev_rm said:

Conceptually I believe a near perfectly sized sieve is going to be a lot more efficient than RO. Agreed just in the lab at this point.. but promising (and not just for boating either.. lots of communities would massively benefit from cheap desal)

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As I understand the reverse osmosis process, water is forced through a membrane like filter.

Not sure this new membrane is really RO from the several articles I read..more of just a filtering process.

Probably why they think it will be cheaper if they can bring the cost of the membranes down.

Found some of the technical publication for those interested:

http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nnano.2017.21.html

The big expense in RO is the energy needed to pressurize the the water before it goes thru a membrane.

Anything that will stop the salt at a lower pressure would be grand.

FF said:

The big expense in RO is the energy needed to pressurize the the water before it goes thru a membrane.

Anything that will stop the salt at a lower pressure would be grand.

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My guess, this is just another way to make a membrane that will work the same as other membranes, only this is graphene related. Perhaps pore size is more uniform.