Scientists have developed a new method of water purification using synthetic membranes

Photo: World Bank Photo Collection / Flickr

To purify or desalinate water so that it becomes potable and irrigable is not an easy task and is not cheap. Even in California, which suffers from droughts and is acutely affected by water scarcity, the financial aspect is crucial. Developing countries, on the other hand, have even fewer opportunities to obtain clean water, but recently an ultra-cheap cleaning process was invented, which looks very promising.

A team of researchers from the University of Alexandria, Egypt, developed a desalination method called pervaporation, which allows you to remove excess salt from sea water and make it drinkable. For this purpose, specially made synthetic membranes are used, which filter large particles of salt and impurities. For final purification after filtration, classical evaporation and collection of “drinking” condensate is applied.

It is extremely important that membranes can be made in any laboratory using commonly available, cheap materials, and evaporation is only a part of those. process, not the whole process. Thus, water can be cleaned continuously, even in conditions of power outages, which is extremely important for developing countries.
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The developed membranes and the whole method are fully applicable not only for the desalination of seawater, but also for wastewater treatment. Researchers in their work used approaches from such areas of knowledge as oceanography, chemistry, agriculture, engineering and the creation of biosystems, which allowed them to create a working, engineering, rather than a "laboratory" solution.

“The technology we have created is much more efficient than the reverse osmosis technology currently used everywhere in Egypt, the countries of the Middle East and North Africa,” said Helmi El-Zanfali, a professor at the National Research Center of Egypt. "Our method can effectively desalinate water with a high salt concentration, for example, the Red Sea, where the costs of desalination are greatest and the water yield is lower."

In the meantime, the scientists who are working on the project should create a desalination pilot station to test the effectiveness of their development for an industrial scale. Another issue that needs to be addressed is what to do with production waste. If the new technology is effective, it will have a huge impact on the lives of millions of people. According to the portal water.org, about 750 million people worldwide are experiencing a shortage of fresh and drinking water, as a result of which 840,000 people die each year.

Via sciencealert.com