Okwudiri Straightman Nwali

Scientists have developed a more efficient way of turning saltwater into drinkable

 

 

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Many wars have been fought over water. And we are likely to fight many more in the coming decades. Already one-tenth of humanity lives in areas where water is scarce, and, according to the United Nations, our rapidly changing climate is going to double that number by 2025.

A solution to this problem is converting sea water into drinkable water. This, however, is expensive. The most energy-efficient method available to us right now is reverse osmosis, but the technology still has severe limitations.

Now researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed a new filter that they claim might be cheaper and more effective than the filters used today. Their results have been published in Nature Comm

 

 

 

 

 

The principle of reverse osmosis is simple. It consists of two chambers separated by a membrane, which has holes only big enough to let water molecules through. When pressure is applied on the saltwater side, salt and other impurities, which are usually much bigger in size, are blocked and pure water is filtered through to the other chamber.

The limitation with current reverse-osmosis filters is that, while the membranes appear thin to the naked eye, at the microscopic level they are still too thick. The passage of water molecules through those filters is like that of moving through a tunnel. Thus it takes more energy to push the water to the other side and there