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Graphene Membranes Superpermeable to Water

Posted by Soulskill on from the it-slices-it-dices dept.

Dr Max writes "Not only is graphene the strongest, thinnest and best conducting material known to man, it is now shown to have superpermeability with respect to water as well. This allows a membrane made with graphene to pass water right through it (PDF), while another atom or molecule (even helium) gets blocked. 'The properties are so unusual that it is hard to imagine that they cannot find some use in the design of filtration, separation or barrier membranes and for selective removal of water,' said one of the researchers."

6 of 292 comments (clear)

  1. Used to collect gifts from Shai-Hulud by geekopus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Now we know what the water receptacles in Dune were made of.

  2. Super desalination? by Draconi · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Press and squeeze a hydraulic press of water through a few layers of graphene = no more salty water?

  3. Fresh water? by gmuslera · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So you could pass thru i.e. ocean or contaminated water and get fresh, drinkable, pure water on the other side? If that could scale could be great.

    1. Re:Fresh water? by Russ1642 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Informative? How about flamebait. This is simply not true. Absolutely insanely pure water is just water. Your body doesn't react to a 0.0001% difference in dissolved solids. After a microsecond in your mouth the water is far from pure.

  4. graphene oxide, not graphene by THE_WELL_HUNG_OYSTER · · Score: 5, Informative

    The material they used was NOT graphene. It was graphene oxide.

  5. Re:Does this mean... by The+Grim+Reefer · · Score: 5, Informative

    ...you don't need a pressure source like you do for reverse osmosis?

    Even if it does not, I would think it would be much more resilient toward chlorine and iron. Perhaps it won't need as much pretreatment done to the water as a conventional film membrane requires. Currently most decent RO systems have a 10 micron sediment filter, followed by 5 and 1 micron carbon filters. If you have high iron content in the feed water, then you need a softener or some other way to reduce it prior to the sediment filter too. Since the three RO pre-filters typically need to be replaced every 6-12 months, they are the most frequent replacement item. A typical RO membrane last 2-5 years. Perhaps this would be lengthened too.