New sieve can make seawater drinkable

The prospect of clean drinking water for millions moves ever closer after UK-based scientists' remarkable creation

Scientists have created a graphene-based sieve capable of making seawater drinkable.

The development by UK-based researchers brings closer the prospect of providing clean water to millions of people who struggle to gain access.

The team at Manchester University, where colleagues won a Nobel Prize in 2010 for first extracting graphene, have managed to precisely control the sizes of pores in a graphene oxide sieve.

The discovery allows them to filter out salts from water to make it safe to drink, they announced in the journal Nature Nanotechnology on Monday.

With man-made climate change reducing cities’ water supplies, countries have been increasingly investing in “desalination” technologies.

The UN has predicted that around 1.2 billion people, or 14% of the world’s population, will experience difficulties sourcing clean water by 2025.

Professor Rahul Nair, who led the team of researchers in Manchester, said it is a “significant step forward” that will “open new possibilities for improving the efficiency of desalination technology”.

There are few global problems likely to become more acute than the lack of safe drinking water. Indeed it is predicted that – if no concerted international action is taken – severe water shortages will affect more than half of the world’s future population of nine billion people by 2050.

Even now, across the world, some 663 million people lack access to safe water. To put it in perspective that’s around 10 percent of the total global population. The figures are stark. Which is why the development of a sieve capable of making seawater drinkable is such a potentially lifechanging breakthrough.

Professor Rahul Nair, who led the Manchester University team behind the invention, rather modestly described it as representing “a significant step forward”.

No doubt much work is still required but the implications are undoubtedly huge.

At present it is not clear whether or not the sieves could be developed on an industrial scale with anything other than prohibitive costs. If it could, this could prove to be one of the most important breakthroughs for many years.

For decades, scientists have grappled with how best to desalinate seawater.

The potential prize is huge and is to be hoped the UK-based scientists have taken a major step toward securing a brighter future for the whole world.

Picture: PA. An illustration of the graphenebased sieve that can make seawater drinkable, created by scientists at Manchester University.