{"id":118118,"date":"2021-01-06T18:22:24","date_gmt":"2021-01-07T02:22:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/01\/new-invention-leads-to-cheap-efficient-water-desalination"},"modified":"2021-01-06T18:22:24","modified_gmt":"2021-01-07T02:22:24","slug":"new-invention-leads-to-cheap-efficient-water-desalination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/01\/new-invention-leads-to-cheap-efficient-water-desalination","title":{"rendered":"New Invention Leads to Cheap Efficient Water Desalination"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/new-invention-leads-to-cheap-efficient-water-desalination.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cReverse osmosis membranes are widely used for cleaning water, but there\u2019s still a lot we don\u2019t know about them,\u201d said in a statement Manish Kumar, an associate professor in the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering at UT Austin, who co-led the research. \u201cWe couldn\u2019t really say how water moves through them, so all the improvements over the past 40 years have essentially been done in the dark.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The researchers discovered that the problem with desalination membranes was that they were inconsistent in density and mass distribution. By giving the membranes a uniform density at the nanoscale, they were able to improve their performance.<\/p>\n<p>The researchers\u2019 new membranes are 30% to 40% more efficient, requiring less energy to clean more water. Although more efficient than non-membrane <a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/interestingengineering.com\/the-fresh-water-crisis-and-desalination-plants\" rel=\"dofollow\" target=\"_blank\" data-id=\"embedded internal links\" data-type=\"link\" data-url=\"https:\/\/interestingengineering.com\/the-fresh-water-crisis-and-desalination-plants\">desalination<\/a> processes, reverse osmosis membranes still use plenty of energy, a problematic aspect the researchers are working on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cReverse osmosis membranes are widely used for cleaning water, but there\u2019s still a lot we don\u2019t know about them,\u201d said in a statement Manish Kumar, an associate professor in the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering at UT Austin, who co-led the research. \u201cWe couldn\u2019t really say how water moves through them, so all [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":542,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1497,38,4,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-118118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy","category-engineering","category-nanotechnology","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/542"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118118\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}