Thirsty for Clean Water

Graphair sample water filter. Photo credit: CSIRO

After a while I get thirsty for a drink of good old H20, especially if there's none at hand. But, unless you have been without safe water to drink you may not understand how essential potable water is.

Floods, earthquakes, drought, severe weather events all of these “natural” happenings, plus, war, polluted ground water, failed municipal water treatment systems – leaching lead pipes – can turn previously safe water into poison in seconds. That's why this development is important to you.

This New Graphene Invention Makes Filthy Seawater Drinkable in One Simple Step, Michelle Starr, sciencealert.com, 16 Feb 2018.

“Using a type of graphene called Graphair, scientists from Australia have created a water filter that can make highly polluted seawater drinkable after just one pass.”

The technology could be used to cheaply provide safe drinking water to regions of the world without access to it.

"Almost a third of the world's population, some 2.1 billion people, don't have clean and safe drinking water," said lead author Dong Han Seo.

"As a result, millions - mostly children - die from diseases associated with inadequate water supply, sanitation and hygiene every year. In Graphair we've found a perfect filter for water purification.

"It can replace the complex, time consuming and multi-stage processes currently needed with a single step."

Developed by researchers at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Graphair is a form of graphene made out of soybean oil.

Graphene - a one-atom-thick, ultrastrong carbon material - might be touted as a supermaterial, but it's been relatively expensive to produce, which has been limiting its use in broader applications.

Graphair is cheaper and simpler to produce than more traditional graphene manufacturing methods, while retaining the properties of graphene. Here is the rest of the story…

Water Facts - water.org

• Today, 1 in 9 people lack access to safe water; 1 in 3 people lack access to a toilet. More people have a mobile phone than a toilet.
• 844 million people live without access to safe water
• 2.3 billion people live without access to improved sanitation
• Every 90 seconds a child dies from a water-related disease
• 1 million people killed by water, sanitation and hygiene-related disease each year
• 3rd leading cause of child death is diarrhea

Please go here for more info: https://water.org/our-impact/water-crisis/

More about graphene? Please go here: Superman's Envy.

Graphene: water filter of the future

CSIRO finds a way to make Sydney Harbour drinkable - and it could save lives.

Published on Feb 25, 2018

Sydney’s iconic harbour has played a starring role in the development of new CSIRO technology that could save lives around the world. Using their own specially designed form of graphene, ‘Graphair’, CSIRO scientists have supercharged water purification, making it simpler, more effective and quicker.

Find out more here: https://research.csiro.au/graphene