Scientists estimate there are billions of people in the world experiencing drinking water crisis. To combat the crisis, researchers created a simple tool that can filter and convert sea water into safe water consumed. Reported by Science Alert, this innovation was developed by a group of researchers from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSRIO) in Australia. They named it Graphair.
This technology can be a cheap solution for a country experiencing a clean water crisis.
"Nearly a third of the world's population, about 2.1 billion people, has no access to safe drinking water," said Dong Han Seo, leader of the research team. "With Graphair we have found the perfect filter to purify water, and he (Graphair) can transform complicated and time-consuming water purification processes into a single process."
Graphair uses layers made of graphene. Although used graphene, carbon material is known strong and expensive, but Graphair fairly cheap because the main component is soybean oil.
To transform it into a filter, the researchers developed a graphene fiber that has a very small nano channel. The nanotubes will let water pass, but will stop polluting with larger molecules.
This technology they tested in the Sydney port for later compared to the water filter there is very polluted. As a result, Graphair has 99 percent better filtering ability and is faster than regular filters.