Removing the salt from sea water can easily be achieved with evaporation – an energy intensive process. While a wetter year and a massive public campaign to reduce household water consumption has solved much of Cape Town’s water shortage, the city also installed a number of desalination plants to avert the crisis. Harsh fines for being in excess of metered household water limits are still in place. While in South Africa, water rationing in 2018 resulted in Cape Town residents queueing in the streets for water handouts and capturing shower water in buckets for later use in flushing toilets.

In Western Australia, the wine-making industry is nearing collapse as climate change is causing the naturally sparse annual rains to fall out at sea, not on the vineyards. In Californian many farmers faced ruin following a 7 year-long drought. In Israel, diverting the Jordan river for agricultural use may mean that the Dead Sea dries up completely.

Drought is a major issue for not only millions of poverty-stricken people in coastal areas, but also in industrialised countries where climate change and agricultural expansion has put extreme pressure on natural fresh-water resources. By applying a mesh of carbon nanotubes to strengthen and block holes in the graphene, the researchers have taken a step towards converting sea water into fresh water with low energy inputs – a massive leap in solving a global issue.Īt present, the world needs better desalination technologies. Nanotechnology scientists are closing in on a practical use for graphene as a desalination membrane.

Carbon nanotubes filter