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ORNL-led team demonstrates desalination with graphene membrane

Posted at 7:25 pm March 30, 2015
By Oak Ridge National Laboratory Leave a Comment

Nature Nanotech Pores

Researchers created nanopores in graphene (red, and enlarged in the circle to highlight its honeycomb structure) that are stabilized with silicon atoms (yellow) and showed their porous membrane could desalinate seawater. Orange represents a non-graphene residual polymer. (Source: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy)

 

By Dawn Levy

Less than 1 percent of Earth’s water is drinkable. Removing salt and other minerals from our biggest available source of water—seawater—may help satisfy a growing global population thirsty for fresh water for drinking, farming, transportation, heating, cooling, and industry. But desalination is an energy-intensive process, which concerns those wanting to expand its application.

Now, a team of experimentalists led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has demonstrated an energy-efficient desalination technology that uses a porous membrane made of strong, slim graphene—a carbon honeycomb one atom thick. The results are published in the March 23 advance online issue of Nature Nanotechnology.

“Our work is a proof of principle that demonstrates how you can desalinate saltwater using free-standing, porous graphene,” said Shannon Mark Mahurin of ORNL’s Chemical Sciences Division, who co-led the study with Ivan Vlassiouk in ORNL’s Energy and Transportation Science Division.

“It’s a huge advance,” said Vlassiouk, pointing out a wealth of water travels through the porous graphene membrane. “The flux through the current graphene membranes was at least an order of magnitude higher than (that through) state-of-the-art reverse osmosis polymeric membranes.” [Read more…]

Filed Under: Front Page News, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Top Stories, U.S. Department of Energy Tagged With: Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, Chemical Sciences Division, CNMS, Dai and Sergei Smirnov, desalination, distillation, Energy and Transportation Science Division, fresh water, Gabriel Veith, graphene, graphene membrane, Ivan Vlassiouk, Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program, Nature Nanotechnology, New Mexico State University, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, ORNL, osmosis, porous membrance, Raymond Unocic, reverse osmosis, reverse osmosis filters, salt ions, scanning transmission electron microscopy, seawater, Shannon Mark Mahurin, Sheng Dai, Sumedh Surwade, U.S. Department of Energy, University of Tennessee, water, Water Desalination Using Nanoporous Single-Layer Graphene, water molecules

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