{"id":12909,"date":"2021-06-30T14:59:03","date_gmt":"2021-06-30T13:59:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.innovationnewsnetwork.com\/?p=12909"},"modified":"2021-06-30T14:59:03","modified_gmt":"2021-06-30T13:59:03","slug":"researchers-convert-seawater-drinking-water-minutes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.innovationnewsnetwork.com\/researchers-convert-seawater-drinking-water-minutes\/12909\/","title":{"rendered":"Researchers convert seawater into drinking water in minutes"},"content":{"rendered":"
According to statistics obtained by the World Health Organization (WHO), approximately 785 million people around the world do not have access to a clean source of drinking water. Despite the enormous quantity of water on Earth, most of it is seawater, and thus undrinkable, and fresh drinking water composes around 2.5% of the total.<\/p>\n
One concept that scientists are working on is the ability to provide clean drinking water by desalinating seawater. Now, the Korea Institute of Civil Engineering and Building Technology (KICT<\/a>) has reported a significant advancement in this field, by developing a stable performance electrospun nanofibre membrane to convert seawater into drinking water by a membrane distillation process.<\/p>\n Currently, membrane wetting is the most difficult obstacle to overcome in the process of membrane distillation. If a membrane displays wetting during membrane distillation operation, the membrane needs to be substituted. Progressive membrane wetting has been particularly observed for long-term operations. If a membrane gets fully wetted, the membrane results in ineffective membrane distillation performance, because the feed flows through the membrane resulting in low-quality permeate.<\/p>\n Now, a group of scientists led by Dr. Yunchul Woo has established co-axial electrospun nanofibre membranes engineered by an alternative nano-technology, which is electrospinning. This novel desalination technology is indicative of the technique\u2019s promise to assist in resolving the world’s freshwater shortage.<\/p>\n