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Water desalination

Graphene cleans up water

Nature Nanotechnology volume 7, pages 552–554 (2012)Cite this article

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Graphene promises water desalination at throughputs much higher than state-of-the-art membranes.

Rapid population growth, industrialization and urbanization have made clean water an increasingly scarce resource, and water desalination represents one promising solution1. Reverse osmosis accounts for nearly half of the world's installed desalination capacity, and works by driving salt (feed) water across a semi-permeable membrane under high pressure. The membrane allows water molecules to pass through, but not salt ions. Reverse osmosis is more energy efficient than other desalination technologies, and has been in industrial development for several decades, but struggles with membrane fouling and slow water transport. New membrane materials are needed to address these issues. Now, writing in Nano Letters, David Cohen-Tanugi and Jeffrey Grossman at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have calculated that graphene with subnanometre pores can surpass the water permeability of current polymeric reverse osmosis membranes by two to three orders of magnitude, making it a high-performance membrane for water desalination2.

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Figure 1: A graphene membrane with subnanometre pores is a promising reverse osmosis membrane.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Evelyn N. Wang and Rohit Karnik Evelyn N. Wang and Rohit Karnik are in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA,

    Evelyn N. Wang & Rohit Karnik

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  1. Evelyn N. Wang
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  2. Rohit Karnik
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Correspondence to Evelyn N. Wang or Rohit Karnik.

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Wang, E., Karnik, R. Graphene cleans up water. Nature Nanotech 7, 552–554 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2012.153

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