Lockheed Martin Designs Cheap, Efficient Saltwater Filters

Gahars

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Lockheed Martin is a well-known defense contractor that's worked with the United States throughout its engagements in the Middle East and beyond. War is their business, and unfortunately, business is a-booming.

But what if they could also save lives? Like, all of them?

As it turns out, they may just be doing that. Lockheed Martin revealed that it has discovered a way to cheaply and efficiently extract freshwater from saltwater sources.
The process, officials and engineers at Lockheed Martin Corp say, would enable filter manufacturers to produce thin carbon membranes with regular holes about a nanometer in size that are large enough to allow water to pass through but small enough to block the molecules of salt in seawater. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter.

Because the sheets of pure carbon known as graphene are so thin - just one atom in thickness - it takes much less energy to push the seawater through the filter with the force required to separate the salt from the water, they said.

The development could spare underdeveloped countries from having to build exotic, expensive pumping stations needed in plants that use a desalination process called reverse osmosis.

"It's 500 times thinner than the best filter on the market today and a thousand times stronger," said John Stetson, the engineer who has been working on the idea. "The energy that's required and the pressure that's required to filter salt is approximately 100 times less."
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Reuters

H2-Oh yeah.

Now, a little bit of context. The Earth has a huge amount of water; scientists predict our planet has between 3 or 4 metric shit tons of the stuff. The problem is, though, about 97% of that is saltwater, and thus, undrinkable for human beings. A lot of freshwater is very difficult to access, which limits our options considerably. With many areas getting scorched by rising temperatures and our booming population, this is kind of, maybe a huge problem. You know, just a little bit.

If we could easily convert that pesky saltwater into freshwater, though, well... that changes everything. Not only could we mitigate a potential-disaster, we could all collectively grab our groins and, in unison, shout, "Hey, Poseidon, suck deez nuts!"

You know, for science.

Lockheed Martin plans to have a prototype out by the end of this year, and they're looking to put the product on the market by 2014 or 2015. While I'm glad to see a relatively quick time frame, I can't help but be a little bit disappointed - I was really hoping to work a "Water they waiting for?" joke in here somewhere.

The sacrifices we have to make, man...
 
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Veho

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I'll take these news with a grain of salt :tpi:

Lockheed still faces a number of challenges in moving to production of filters made of graphene, a substance similar to the lead in pencils. Working with the thin material without tearing it is difficult, as is ramping up production to the size and scale needed. Engineers are still refining the process for making the holes.

Also, how cheap is "cheap"?
 
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Taleweaver

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So...after a war for oil, will there be a war for water?


I'm not optimistic. On pretty much any other company, I would have been. But lockheed martin? C'mon...you already know how things will go. Some country will get enough bad press so America can do that preventive "strike thingy" that somehow justifies attacking innocent people. Then LM's bombers turn out to be "mislead" so they'll destroy things like water plants. Then after the slaughtering of innocents war is over, they'll proudly rebuild the nation with Lockfleet Martin's cheap saltwater filters.


...or is that supposed to be "cheap" as in "it will cost the consumers less than they're paying now"? :unsure:
 

Celice

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So...after a war for oil, will there be a war for water?
Scarcity of water has been known about for quite some time. It's one of humanity's little treasures that the species would willfully ignore the problem until it's too late--perhaps for our own betterment, if we couldn't be bothered to save ourselves in the first place.
 

FireEmblemGuy

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Is it just me or does the thread title feel really close to spambot formatting? Maybe I'm just not awake enough today but I honestly thought that's what this was at first glance.
 

omgpwn666

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We can already turn urine into drinking water with something NASA invented, but I think I'd rather drink saltwater converted into fresh water.
 

Hop2089

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This would be an ideal and cost effective way of desalinating water in California and most of the Northwest and also Florida which like California already has a desalination facility, California can have some cheap desalination plants that the state desperately needs.
 

Ergo

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Surprise, some people find a problem with a defense contractor provided something that many many millions of people don't get enough of...

(God help them if they ever look into what, exactly, that big bad ol' "military industrial complex" has contributed to making modern they take for granted every day--their little pinheads might 'splode.)
 

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