Tiny membrane makes Sydney Harbour "drinkable"

Posted by $ nickursis 8 years ago to Science
34 comments | Share | Flag

Now this, if it works as advertised, seems almost on par with John Gaults motor. If it can reject salt, then you could use this in industrial sized plants and make a boatload of clean water. This seems pretty wild for such simple processes rendered b a new design.


All Comments


Previous comments...   You are currently on page 2.
  • Posted by $ 8 years ago in reply to this comment.
    Exactly, and get rich allong the way, just like the CEO of INtel who has been with the company for 20 years but tossed all his stock he could out before announcing the little issue with the vulnerabilities, yet says he is "completely committed to Intels success being a data centric company", as Motley Fool pointed out: You don't dump your company stock when you believe in it. I see it everywhere, and get really angry when some idiot comes in and his huge flash of genius is "cut everything 20%. Good grief..I could have a Democrat come up with that bit of wisdom
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 8 years ago in reply to this comment.
    Nothing beats the original business creators and the worker that was mentored from the bottom up to take over when the original creators retire.
    That doesn't happen anymore. Instead, they hire, "professional" CEO's, CFO's...they know nothing of the businesses they run nor the people that make it work, make it profitable, people that gave the business a life of it's own.
    All they know is contacts, influence and a perpetuation of business... not the creation of new business.
    They suck it dry and move on to destroy the next business.
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by $ 8 years ago in reply to this comment.
    I have real issues with people in "management" today (well for the last 20 years at least or longer). People who have no skills equal to the employees they "manage" and so make decisions based on what? Their best guesses? Invariably bad things happen. Usually we see companies collapse and go bankrupt with such stellar "leadership". Home Depot comes to mind....
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 8 years ago in reply to this comment.
    Sad but true...it's a for profit business that disregards the end user. That's NOT capitalism, nor is it humane therefore not human.

    I just don't get it, although I understand the mindless set right down to the cellular level. Why not cure one thing at a time, then move on to the next.
    When a business is started to solve a problem one should aim to put one's self out of business in regards to that problem.
    There always problems to solve, so why the corrupt bullcrap!
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by $ 8 years ago in reply to this comment.
    Those are good points, and you probably have some good ideas here to be adderssed. You know how easy it is to leave out "inconvient" facts. Reminds me of the whole "Anabuse" fiasco, where they have found it will kill a broad range of cancer with no side effects, yet because it is generic, and open source the FDA wont touch it, and no company will, and no doctors, as there is no money in it.
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 8 years ago in reply to this comment.
    However...I saw no studies of toxic leaching other than exposure to the sheets in MFGing. In the posted use, we need to know if it leaches out into the water...
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 8 years ago in reply to this comment.
    In vivo toxicity 2012

    Only five studies reported biodistribution and toxicity of graphene oxide following intravenous and intratracheal injection in mice (Table 3). Wang et al. (2011) divided thirty Kun Ming mice into three test groups (low, middle, high dose) and one control group. Test groups were injected intravenously with 0.1, 0.25, and 0.4 mg graphene oxides, respectively. Graphene oxide under low dose (0.1 mg) and middle dose (0.25 mg) did not exhibit visible toxicity to mice and under high dose (0.4 mg) exhibited chronic toxicity (4 out of 9 mice died). At a dose of 0.4 mg graphene oxide caused granuloma formation, in the kidneys, lungs, liver, spleen, and could not be cleaned by kidney. At a dose of 0.4 mg graphene oxide was not filtrated by the kidneys.
    Table 3
    Table 3
    Summary of the graphene family materials in vivo toxicity

    Similar results were obtained by Zhang et al. (2011) who investigated the distribution and biocompatibility of graphene oxide in Kun Ming mice. The use of radiotracer technique revealed high uptake and long term retention of graphene oxide in the lungs as well as a relatively long blood circulation time. No significant pathological changes in all the examined organs were observed following the exposure to 1 mg kg−1 of graphene oxide for 14 days. However, 10-fold increase of the dose led to forming significant pathological changes. Following the exposure to 10 mg kg−1 body weight of graphene oxide for 14 days, authors observed significant pathological changes, such as inflammation, cell infiltration, pulmonary edema, and granuloma formation in the lungs of mice.

    Couldn't get much (without paying) from the 2014 study.

    Even though, most low dose had minimal interactions, high doses did resulting in death (mice and human cell De-coheasion...so my take is even if the exposure is low and even with the reduced graphene, "It would be cumulative".
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by $ 8 years ago in reply to this comment.
    OUC, the transcript from the video has this statement:
    "Our graphene membrane enables 100% salt rejection as well as 100% rejection of household contaminants such as detergents and oil without fouling which was tested for over many days."

    Like I said above, IF (a big if) it can reject salt it has a huge potential especially in water poor but ocean rich areas. I assume they have some reverse flush system that would regenerate it, but didn't see how that works.

    As far as toxicity, here is what I found

    2012:
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...

    2014:
    https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/...

    It seems it is not considered toxic, in fact they say several applications for drug delivery and removal systems for internal use.
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 8 years ago
    Three things stick out to me: 1, graphite is not a good thing for the body...hope it is stable and doesn't leach out. 2. soy bean oil? really?...is there a "Clean" source anywhere on the planet? and 3, Sydney harbor is salt water, but I guess they were talking about the town/city fresh water...must have been pretty nasty to need filtering.

    Seems simple...hope it pans out...of course the environ[mental]ist will insist on adding floride and other poisons...
    Reply | Permalink  

  • Comment hidden. Undo