Making Salt Water Drinkable Just Got 99 Percent Easier

When I search to find the minimum energy cost of separating the salt and water based on entropy, I find this article:

http://arstechnica.com/science/2011/08/desalinization-is-thi...

> A state-of-the-art facility is now within a factor of two of the theoretical energy minimum

> The total process of desalination turns out to require three to four times the theoretical minimal energy use, since the salt water must be pumped and pretreated, the membranes maintained, and the resulting brine handled afterwards.

Somebody is not being very honest.

The author doing the usual journalism thing of not understanding what's going on and then breathlessly reporting something similar and very wrong that'll get certain people excited is one thing, I know to expect that. Watching this get upvoted onto the front page is... well, maybe my expectations are too high.

So this article obviously is not representing truth. Essentially author picked old news, as someone said, Graphene has a new publicist. Also didn't really understand how thing work to be able to claim 100 times better efficiency.

My question is this, why do these things happen?

Is it because Gizmodo is hiring people who would work for rock bottom salaries?

Is it because journalists are pushed to crank out articles?

Is it something else?

This is from 2013. Anyone come across recent development from it?

Seems like the most obvious next step for someone interested in the research would be just to contact the research lead directly:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-stetson-jr-48aa3a50

This is a well known application of graphene, the challenge is in working out the manufacturing processes to get the cost down whilst still retaining the material uniformity. It will be revolutionary when its available. Does anyone have any news of recent progress in graphene manufacturing?

Article is from 2013.

Anything amazing these days you just know graphene is involved without even looking at the article.

Just the past 11 days alone I've seen articles on graphene coated solar panels make power, graphene filters for terahertz communications, nanotube film, nano-silicon graphene Li-Ion battery electrodes, even graphene tennis rackets and now this graphene water filter.

Graphene has been creating quite a few news (other was raindrop electricity).

What's the cost of graphene, is it cheap enough?

If this was true it would change everything: agriculture in the worlds deserts would cut food prices in half or more, greening he deserts would suck up a ton of co2, no more water shortages.

Yeah, yeah, we know, graphene can cure all the world's problems.