Original Title: South Korea's Seawater Desalination Nano Film Lasts Long, Filtration Effect Is Still as High as 99.99% After One Month "Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink", the ocean is like this, but we can use new technology to convert seawater into drinkable fresh water,rotovap distillation, recently South Korean scientists have developed a highly efficient new nanofiber membrane, and after 30 days of use, the effect of filtering saline is still 99.99%. Seawater desalination is divided into reverse osmosis and distillation,cbd centrifugal extractor, in which reverse osmosis uses pressure difference and "selective penetration" reverse osmosis membrane to separate water and salt. Fresh water and seawater are placed on both sides of the membrane. Due to different osmotic pressures, water molecules will flow from fresh water to seawater until the two sides complete the equilibrium state; Distillation is done by heating seawater, separating the salt from the water vapor, and condensing the water vapor into fresh water. This method requires a large amount of heat energy and is usually combined with a thermal power plant. The team of Korea Institute of Civil Engineering and Construction Engineering Technology (KICT), a state-owned company in South Korea, thin film distillation ,jacketed glass reactor, focuses on Membrane Distillation (MD) this time. A hydrophobic membrane is selected as the separator. One side is the heating saline, and the other side is the cooler fresh water. The steam pressure difference is the driving force, and the steam will pass through the membrane to the other side to condense into water. Compared with the traditional reverse osmosis desalination process, membrane distillation has attracted much attention in the fields of water resources, environment and chemical industry because of its characteristics of less influence on the concentration of the liquid to be treated, normal or low pressure operation, high water purity, high water recovery rate and integration of waste heat or renewable energy. （Source：KICT） In order to improve the desalination efficiency again, KICT researchers used the co-axial electrospinning process to create a new hydrophobic membrane, which is an engineering process that uses electric charges to extract very fine fibers from liquids. Two different materials, PVDF-HFP polymer and silica aerogel, are mixed into the printing material. The rough surface is conducive to drainage, while the silica aerogel is like a thermal insulation material, which prevents the heating zone from accidentally conducting heat energy to the cold zone, so as to maintain a high vapor difference between the two sides. The team pointed out that the electrospun membrane usually used for desalination can only be used for 50 hours, but after the team's actual test, it was found that the electrospun nano-membrane could still filter out 99.99% of the salt after 30 days, which is much longer than other electrospun nano-fiber membranes. Yunchul Woo,molecular distillation systems, a senior researcher at KICT and an assistant professor at the University of Science and Technology of Korea, said that coaxial electrospun nanofiber membranes have high application potential in seawater treatment and do not have infiltration problems, which are suitable for pilot-scale or full-scale membrane distillation plants. (First image source: Unsplash) Return to Sohu to see more Responsible Editor:. toptiontech.com