{"id":119086,"date":"2016-04-21T07:44:38","date_gmt":"2016-04-21T05:44:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/germistoncitynews.co.za\/119086\/weapons-maker-finds-cheap-way-to-filter-sea-water\/"},"modified":"2016-04-21T07:44:38","modified_gmt":"2016-04-21T05:44:38","slug":"weapons-maker-finds-cheap-way-to-filter-sea-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/germiston-city-news\/news-headlines\/2016\/04\/21\/weapons-maker-finds-cheap-way-to-filter-sea-water\/","title":{"rendered":"Weapons maker finds cheap way to filter sea water"},"content":{"rendered":"

An engineer at Lockheed Martin<\/a> has found a way to reduce the amount of energy needed to remove salt from seawater, potentially making it vastly cheaper to produce clean water at a time when water scarcity has become a global security issue.<\/p>\n

Existing reverse osmosis plants rely on complicated processes that are expensive and energy-intensive to operate.<\/p>

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Lockheed Martin\u2019s Perforene is made from single atom-thick sheets of graphene. Because the sheets are so thin, water flows through them far more easily than through a conventional reverse osmosis filter.<\/p>\n

Filters made through the Perforene process would incorporate filtering holes just 100 *nm in diameter\u2014large enough to let water molecules through but small enough to capture dissolved salts. *A nanometer (nm) is a billionth of a meter.<\/p>

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Says John Stetson, the Lockheed engineer credited with the invention of the salt filter: “It looks a bit like chicken wire when viewed under a microscope, but ounce for ounce, its 1000 times stronger than steel.”<\/p>\n

Access to steady supplies of clean water is getting more and more difficult in the developing world.<\/p>\n

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