While attending the EuroNanoForum 2011 conference this week in Budapest, Hungary, I was confronted with at least once considering how nanotechnology could be used in water purification and desalination. You really can’t get through one of these things without hearing how nanotechnology could save the world.
The article relates how CNTs are enabling a technique used by Reese that moves away from the high-energy-cost process of reverse osmosis. In this technique, Reese has shown that the CNTs can improve water permeability 20 times that of modern commercial reverse-osmosis membranes. A factor of 20 improvement in permeability should have a pretty significant impact on the energy requirements.
This is certainly a move in the right direction. However, I have to confess that when I put the NanoWater conference together seven years ago, I had somewhat greater expectations that we would be further along at this point. I am not entirely convinced it’s a lack of technological solutions, nanotech related or otherwise, that is the cause of the delay.
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