Sci/Tech RPT, Pentagon weapons-maker, finds method for cheap, clean water

tom_mai78101

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WASHINGTON, March 13 (Reuters) - A defense contractor better known for building jet fighters and lethal missiles says it has found a way to slash the amount of energy needed to remove salt from seawater, potentially making it vastly cheaper to produce clean water at a time when scarcity has become a global security issue.

The process, officials and engineers at Lockheed Martin Corp say, would enable filter manufacturers to produce thin carbon membranes with regular holes about a nanometer in size that are large enough to allow water to pass through but small enough to block the molecules of salt in seawater. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter.

Because the sheets of pure carbon known as graphene are so thin - just one atom in thickness - it takes much less energy to push the seawater through the filter with the force required to separate the salt from the water, they said.

The development could spare underdeveloped countries from having to build exotic, expensive pumping stations needed in plants that use a desalination process called reverse osmosis.

"It's 500 times thinner than the best filter on the market today and a thousand times stronger," said John Stetson, the engineer who has been working on the idea. "The energy that's required and the pressure that's required to filter salt is approximately 100 times less."

 
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Accname

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Wouldnt that filter be clogged all the time if salt atoms couldnt pass through? And only "1 atom in thickness" are they serious? That wouldnt even be visible. That thing would probably break if you try to hold it.
 

tom_mai78101

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Can you actually break a thin film with a thickness of 1 atom? We gotta ask this to the XKCD people.
 

KaerfNomekop

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You wouldn't even see the film if you looked sideways and might just trip over it.
 

Slapshot136

Divide et impera
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Wouldnt that filter be clogged all the time if salt atoms couldnt pass through? And only "1 atom in thickness" are they serious? That wouldnt even be visible. That thing would probably break if you try to hold it.

it would need to be reinforced somehow, and I think you are imagining it a bit differently - you would want something like this:

----->----->----->----->----->----->----->----->-----> (water flow)
_______________________________________ (filter)
. . . . . . . . . (water drops)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ (clean water)

(perhaps with a slight downward slant) - where the water flows across it, not directly down - that way excess salt is just washed away to the right
 

FireCat

Oh Shi.. Don't wake the tiger!
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Someone will Just sweep it under the carpet. It's too cheap!
 
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