(Oak Ridge National Laboratory, US Dept. of Energy, 25 March 2015.

) “Study demonstrates
desalination with nano porous graphene membrane”

 An energy-efficient desalination technology uses a porous membrane made of strong, slim

graphene—a carbon honeycomb one atom thick.
 The flux through the current graphene membranes was at least an order of magnitude
higher than state-of-the art reverse osmosis polymeric membranes.
 Current methods for purifying water include distillation and reverse osmosis. Distillation, or
heating a mixture to extract volatile components that condense, requires a significant
amount of energy. Reverse osmosis, a more energy-efficient process that nonetheless
requires a fair amount of energy.
 Making pores in the graphene is key. Without these holes, water cannot travel from one side
of the membrane to the other. The water molecules are simply too big to fit through
graphene's fine mesh.
 But poke holes in the mesh that are just the right size, and water molecules can penetrate.
Salt ions, in contrast, are larger than water molecules and cannot cross the membrane. The
porous membrane allows osmosis, or passage of a fluid through a semipermeable
membrane into a solution in which the solvent is more concentrated.
 A filter is thin and resides on a support. It takes significant pressure to push water from the
saltwater side to the freshwater side.
 Graphene to the rescue Graphene is only one-atom thick, yet flexible and strong. Its
mechanical and chemical stabilities make it promising in membranes for separations. A
porous graphene membrane could be more permeable than a polymer membrane, so
separated water would drive faster through the membrane under the same conditions, the
scientists reasoned.

(Yongchen Liu,2017) “Application of graphene oxide in water treatment”

 Graphene is a carbon material, a two-dimensional honeycomb lattice structure, with a single

layer of atomic thickness
 There is a strong van der Waals force between the graphene sheets, which leads to the
difficult application of graphene materials directly. Graphene oxide is the most common
derivative of graphene.
 The main methods of preparation are vacuum suction filtration, spray coating, spin coating,
dip coating and the layer by layer methodthere is a strong hydrogen bond in the graphene
layer
 The graphene film is considered to be a new type of carbon-based film which has been
widely used in water purification, ion screening and other fields [13]

[13] AG Livingston, LMFD Santos, P Pavasant, EN Pistikopoulos, LF Strachan. Detoxification of

industrial wastewaters in an extractive membrane bioreactor [J]. Water Science & Technology,
1996, 33(3):1-8.
(K.A. Mahmoud-2014) “Functional graphene nanosheets: The next generation membranes for
water desalination”

 Among the significant recent advancements in the design and development of new
membrane systems is the use of graphenes.
 Graphenes have offered a novel class of mechanically robust, ultrathin, high-flux, high
selectivity, and fouling resistant separation membranes that provide opportunities to
advance water desalination technologies.
 Membrane-based desalination techniques, mainly reverse osmosis (RO), are currently
considered as more environmentally friendly and energy-efficient than that of thermal
desalination methods such as multistage flash and multiple-effect distillation. However,
these technologies suffer from low desalination capacity and high capital costs.
 This has urged the need for developing novel membranes which can reduce the energy
consumption of the RO process by showing high water permeability coupled with high salt
rejection capacity [4]
 Recently, nanostructures such as zeolites, metal organic frameworks, ceramics and carbon
based materials have attracted considerable attention as alternative membrane materials to
replace polymeric membranes [4]
 Graphene nanosheets display ideal chemical and physical properties in the desalination
process. Despite its negligible thickness, membranes made of graphene exhibit adequate
mechanical strength, capability of functioning under higher pressures that is superior to
conventional polymeric RO membranes currently in circulation [11,17].
 Graphene can be defined as one-atom-thick 2D sheets, consisting of sp2 bonded carbon
atoms arranged in a hexagonal, honeycomb lattice.
 The most critical characteristic of graphene is its extremely versatile and tunable carbon
backbone, leading to facile functionalization, and incorporation in a variety of applications
[21].
 GO membranes can be fabricated from GO nanosheets by different methods including
vacuum filtration, layer-by-layer (LbL) deposition, drop casting, and spin coating [92].

[4] T. Humplik, J. Lee, S.C. O'Hern, B.A. Fellman, M.A. Baig, S.F. Hassan, M.A. Atieh, F. RAhman, T.
Laoui, R. Karnik, E.N. Wang, Nanostructured materials for water desalination, Nanotechnology 22
(2011) 292001.

[5] M.M. Pendergast, E.M.V. Hoek, A review of water treatment membrane

nanotechnologies,Energy Environ. Sci. 4 (2011) 1946–1971.

[11] Q. Lu, R. Huang, Nonlinear mechanics of single-atomic layer graphene sheets, Int. J. Appl.
Mech. 1 (2009) 443–467.

[17] D. Cohen-Tanugi, J.C. Grossman, Water Desalination across Nanoporous Graphene, Nano Lett.
12 (2012) 3602–3608.

[92] B. Mi, Graphene Oxide Membranes for Ionic and Molecular Sieving, Science 343 (2014) 740–
742.
(MARCANO ET AL- 2010 )“Improved Synthesis of Graphene Oxide”

 Graphene is a single atomic layer of sp2 carbon atoms.

 The most common approach to graphite exfoliation is the use of strong oxidizing agents to
yield graphene oxide (GO), a nonconductive hydrophilic carbon [14-17]
 The most common source of graphite is flake graphite, which is a naturally occurring mineral
.GO prepared from flake graphite can be readily dispersed in water and has been used on a
large scale for preparing large graphitic films

 Currently, Hummers’ method is the most common method used for preparing graphene
oxide. We have found that excluding the NaNO3 increasing the amount of KMnO , and
performing the reaction in a 9:1 mixture of H2SO4 and H3PO4 improves the efficiency of the
oxidation process. This improved method provides a greater amount of hydrophilic oxidized
graphene material as compared to Hummers’ method or Hummers’ method with additional
KMnO4

14. Higginbotham, A. L.; Lomeda, J. R.; Morgan, A. B.; Tour, J. M. Graphite Oxide Flame-Retardant
Polymer Nanocomposites. Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2009, 1, 2256–2261.

15. Hummers, W. S.; Offeman, R. E. Preparation of Graphitic Oxide. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1958,
80,1339.

16. Lerf, A.; He, H.; Forster, M.; Klinowski, J. Structure of Graphite Oxide Revisited. J. Phys. Chem.
B 1998, 102, 4477– 4482.

17. Dreyer, D. R.; Park, S.; Bielawski, C. W.; Ruoff, R. The Chemistry of Graphene Oxide. Chem. Soc.
Rev. 2010, 39,228–240.
(R.K.Joshietal-2015) “Graphene oxide: the new membrane material”

 A membrane is considered as a barrier with an ability to allow the passage of certain species
while blocks other depending on characteristics of the membrane and species to be filtered.
 Membrane technology is a rapidly growing research area with several real time applications
such as desalination and water purification.
 Membranes have been classified in to two types and they are polymeric membranes and
inorganic membranes
 Graphene, in general, does not allow anything to pass through. Graphene oxide (GO) is
continuously demonstrating its excellent membrane characteristics and offer huge potential
for real applications.

(Hanaa M. Hegab, Linda Zou -2015) “Graphene oxide-assisted Membranes: Fabrication and
potential Applications in desalination and water purification”

 Desalination is one of the most important and promising methods for fresh water
augmentation [3].
 The membrane based desalination processes can be categorised according to membrane
pore size and rejection mechanism: membrane distillation (MD), electrodialysis (ED),
microfiltration (MF), ultrafiltration (UF), nanofiltration (NF) and reverse osmosis (RO) [4].
 Graphene is a layer of strongly packed pure carbon atoms that are joined together in a
hexagonal honeycomb matrix. More comprehensively, it is a carbon allotrope arranged in
flat sp2bonded atoms with a very small molecule bond length (0.142 nm). Graphite is a
three-dimensional material formed by the arrangement of graphene layers on top of each
other, with tiny (0.335 nm) interplanar gaps [11].

[3] S.J. Kim, S.H. Ko, K.H. Kang, J. Han, Direct seawater desalination by ion concentration
polarization., Nat. Nanotechnol. 5 (2010) 297–301. doi:10.1038/nnano.2010.34.

[4] R.W. Baker, Membrane Technology and Applications, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, West Sussex,
England, 2004.

[11] D. Cohen-Tanugi, J.C. Grossman, Water desalination across nanoporous graphene., Nano

Lett. 12 (2012) 3602–8. doi:10.1021/nl3012853.

(Shahin Homaeigohar and Mady Elbahri-2017)”Graphene membranes for water desalination”

 Extensive environmental pollution caused by worldwide industrialization and population

growth has led to a water shortage.
 This problem lowers the quality of human life and wastes a large amount of money
worldwide each year due to the related consequences.
 One main solution for this challenge is water purification. State-of-the-art water purification
necessitates the implementation of novel materials and technologies that are cost and
energy efficient.
 Graphene nanomaterials, with their unique physicochemical properties, are an optimum
choice.

(Yi You , V. Sahajwalla ,M. Yoshimura ,R. K. Joshi-2015) “Graphene and Graphene Oxide for
Desalination”

 Graphene based materials exhibit unlimited potential to be used as membrane for

desalination.

 Membrane with nanoporous graphene can exhibit 100% salt rejection.

 However, the graphene oxide membrane with precise control of pore size can be practical
solutions for filtration due the cost effective fabrication .