CEE Professor Baoxia Mi is developing a graphene membrane as a new and better way to purify water and wastewater—and consume less energy in the process.
Mi believes that the membrane would be very attractive to government and industry, especially in the midst of California’s longstanding drought. That’s because their ability to be more energy-efficient and less costly makes them potentially useful in seawater desalination — an approach that has been raised as a potential solution to increase the state’s water supply, yet is considered today to be largely infeasible due to the high costs and energy intensive needs of desalination plants.
Read Filtering water with graphene (Berkeley Engineering, 1/15/16)