Defense Contractor Lockheed Martin Finds Method For Cheap Clean Water

[longknife]

Pentagon Weapons-Maker Finds Method For Cheap, Clean Water -- Reuters

(Reuters) - A defense contractor better known for building jet fighters and lethal missiles says it has found a way to slash the amount of energy needed to remove salt from seawater, potentially making it vastly cheaper to produce clean water at a time when scarcity has become a global security issue.

The process, officials and engineers at Lockheed Martin Corp say, would enable filter manufacturers to produce thin carbon membranes with regular holes about a nanometer in size that are large enough to allow water to pass through but small enough to block the molecules of salt in seawater. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter.

Because the sheets of pure carbon known as graphene are so thin - just one atom in thickness - it takes much less energy to push the seawater through the filter with the force required to separate the salt from the water, they said.

Read more ....Pentagon weapons-maker finds method for cheap, clean water | Reuters

My Comment: The long term benefits from such a discovery should not be discounted.

Wow! Just think if the incredible benefits of this. The ability to refresh and replenish streams, rivers, and groundwater. Plus the minerals recovered from seawater. And, none of this water would be lost as it will be naturally returned to the sea as it has for millennium.

And one little tidbit at the end of the article:

Lockheed officials see other applications for Perforene as well, from dialysis in healthcare to cleaning chemicals from the water used in hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," of oil and gas wells.

 

[Old Rocks]

Wow. This will be a major development in so many ways. Thank you for posting it.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Science and the development of techonology is what humanity is good at. That and exploring...

To bad we don't fund such more!