Over 2.1 billion people worldwide have no access to safe drinking water . But now scientists from Australia have created a graphene filter that can turn the contaminated water into drinking after just one filter . The invention is called Graffer and can be used to provide inexpensive and safe drinking water in regions where it is still inaccessible. "As a result of the problem of access to clean water millions of people, and unfortunately a large number of them are children, die of diseases related to the lack of drinking water, lack of hygiene and disinfection," said Dong Han Seo, who is the lead author of research. "With Graffer we created the perfect water purifier. It can replace complicated and time-consuming processes in a simple step. "
One of the properties of graphene is its hydrophobicity - it repels the water. In order to use this property for their purposes, the discoverers made a film of graphene with microscopic nanoscale. They are so small that they only leak water and stop large pollutants like larger molecules. During the tests, the team found that the graphene filter stopped 99% of all pollutants, much faster than standard filters. And it continued to work even after it was covered with pollutants, as standard filters had to be replaced or cleaned.