The new findings are from a ...

The new findings are from a group of scientists at The University of Manchester which was published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology in January 2017. They have now developed new graphene based membrane that can avoid the swelling of the membrane when exposed to water which was not previously possible. They are able control the pore size in the membrane up to very small level which can sieve common salts out of salty water and make it safe to drink.

The experiment has been done on laboratory scale with a membrane of size less than 1 cm2 and showed that reducing the pore size did not affect much on the water flux but improved salt rejection compared to previously developed graphene membrane. Moreover, they did not perform any desalting experiment and only used as forward osmosis (FO) membrane where no pressure is applied. FO experiment showed that it has salt rejection of only 97% with water flux 0.5 lmh, which is not commercially attractive. In order to make these membranes commercially attractive, it need further improvement in its performance in terms of flux as well as salt rejection and also shall be capable of scaling up to larger system. None of these are observed in the present findings and hence we need to wait and watch for further developments in this regard.