The idea seems simple — push salty water through and clean water comes out the other side — but it contains complex intricacies that scientists are still trying to understand.
The research team, in partnership with DuPont Water Solutions, solved an important aspect of this mystery, opening the door to reduce costs of clean water production.
The researchers determined desalination membranes are inconsistent in density and mass distribution, which can hold back their performance.
Uniform density at the nanoscale is the key to increasing how much clean water these membranes can create.
The paper documents an increase in efficiency in the membranes tested by 30%-40%, meaning they can clean more water while using significantly less energy.
That could lead to increased access to clean water and lower water bills for individual homes and large users alike.
They modeled the path water takes through these membranes to predict how efficiently water could be cleaned based on structure. »
