A super-thin slice of wood can be used to turn saltwater drinkable

[Judi Lynn]

PHYSICS 2 August 2019
By Leah Crane

Filtering the salt from seawater can take a lot of energy or specialised engineering. A thin membrane made of porous wood may be able to fix that.

In membrane distillation, salty water is pumped through a film, usually made of some sort of polymer with very narrow pores that filter out the salt and allow only water molecules through. Jason Ren at Princeton University in New Jersey and his colleagues developed a new kind of membrane made of natural wood instead of plastic.

“If you think of traditional water filtration, you need very high-pressure pumping to squeeze the water through, so it uses a lot of energy,” says Ren. “This is more energy efficient and it doesn’t use fossil-fuel based materials like many other membranes for water filtration.”

His team’s membrane is made of a thin piece of American basswood, which undergoes a chemical treatment to strip away extra fibres in the wood and to make its surface slippery to water molecules. One side of the membrane is heated so that when water flows over that side it is vapourised.

Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2212346-a-super-thin-slice-of-wood-can-be-used-to-turn-saltwater-drinkable/#ixzz5vtOIXP3o

[diva77]

1. We could sure use this in CA!

[mitch96]

2. "doesn't use fossil-fuel based materials"

Just trees that scrub CO2.. I'm curious about the energy source to process the wood.. and the cost vs the polymer membrane...
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