In a finding that could make the process of removing salt from seawater easier, faster and cheaper than ever before, researchers have discovered that carbon nanotubes of a certain size act as the perfect filter for salt\u2014the most abundant water contaminant.Currently, desalinisation is too expensive and energy intensive for large-scale feasibility.<\/p>\n
The study, published in the journal Science, showed that carbon nanotubes are better at desalinisation than any other existing method\u2014natural or man-made.<\/p>\n
Filtering water is tricky because water molecules want to stick together.<\/p>\n
The \u201cH\u201d in H2O is hydrogen, and hydrogen bonds are strong, requiring a lot of energy to separate. Water tends to bulk up and resist being filtered. But nanotubes do it rapidly, with ease.<\/p>\n
A carbon nanotube is like an impossibly small rolled up sheet of paper, about a nanometer in diameter.<\/p>\n
For comparison, the diameter of a human hair is 50 to 70 micrometers – 50,000 times wider.<\/p>\n
The tube\u2019s miniscule size, exactly 0.8 nm, only allows one water molecule to pass through at a time.<\/p>\n
This single-file lineup disrupts the hydrogen bonds, so water can be pushed through the tubes at an accelerated pace, with no bulking, the study said.<\/p>\n
To conduct the research, Meni Wanunu, Associate Professor of Physics at Northeastern University in Boston and post-doctoral student Robert Henley collaborated with scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.<\/p>\n
In addition to being precisely the right size for passing single water molecules, carbon nanotubes have a negative electric charge.<\/p>\n
This causes them to reject anything with the same charge, like the negative ions in salt, as well as other unwanted particles.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile salt has a hard time passing through because of the charge, water is a neutral molecule and passes through easily,\u201d Wanunu said.<\/p>\n
The finding offers a novel system that could have major implications for the future of water security.<\/p>\n
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