Making Saltwater Drinkable With Graphene

An anonymous reader writes "Graphene once again proves that it is quite possibly the most miraculous material known to man, this time by making saltwater drinkable. The process was developed by a group of MIT researchers who realized that graphene allowed for the creation of an incredibly precise sieve. Basically, the regular atomic structure of graphene means that you can create holes of any size, for example the size of a single molecule of water. Using this process scientist can desalinate saltwater 1,000 times faster than the Reverse Osmosis technique."

"scientist"

[Anonymous Coward]

Using this process scientist can desalinate saltwater 1,000 times faster than the Reverse Osmosis technique.

Well isn't that swell for 'scientist', but does scientist plan to share?

Wow! They'd have enough salt to last forever.

[trout007]

God I loved "Top Secret"

Filtering abilities of graphene membranes

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I just wonder if a graphene membrane could filter out the words "awesomely", "incredibly" and "super" from awesomely incredibly super texts, leaving only texts. *That* would be quite useful.

trifecta

[tverbeek]

Once we figure out how to make nanobots out of stem cells and graphene, every problem known to humanity will be solved!

Re:Holes?

[ffflala]

Occasionally some gunk gets in there but it washes away sooner or later; and nothing spends any appreciable amount of time stuck in an individual graphene hole.

She was a real hot-shooter, that bubble. I should have known she'd be trouble from the get go; she was naturally "charged" as they say when they're trying to be polite.

With her bouncing around all over the place even at room temperature, I guess I should have seen it coming. But, as will happen to palookas and wishful thinkers, my hopes and processes got the best of me. I was convinced that any trouble would wash away as soon as it cropped She didn't even say goodbye, just left a note saying she'd thought she had found a solution with me, but couldn't stand the suspension and was afraid of becoming just another precipitate.

That was three years ago. I took the tube directly to this here graphene hole; it was the closest one I could find. I've been stuck here ever since.

Re:"scientist"

[axlr8or]

Don't worry, they are meeting with Apple execs as we speak to save the world. It will be called, the iDsalter. The commerical will be giving a can of Redbull to an astronaut, and kicking him out the airlock of the ISS with a parachute and a pair of augmented reality googles, bluetooth paired to an iPad so he can watch ads all the way down while recording his POV.

Graphene:

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

The most useful substance never mass-produced.

Re:A foul subject.

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely it won't last forever...

Yes, it will last forever, and don't call me Shirley.

Re:Why stop at salt?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, so you're this guy:

http://gawker.com/assets/resources/2008/05/jordancolbert.jpeg

Re:Why stop at salt?

[SpaghettiPattern]

Water Molecule: 275 pico-meters

Ecoli Bacteria: 0.6 micro-meters (109,000x larger)

Rhinovirus: 30 nm (110x larger)

Rhinoceros: 4m (14,545,454,500x larger)

Re:A foul subject.

[ciderbrew]

The metric system lacks fistfuls as a measure. I think we can all agree, it is incomplete and broken.