Growing demand for hygienic drinking water pushing scientists to find alternative ways to purify drinking water. Researchers at Rochester Institute of Technology(RIT) are developing a new class of carbon nanotube to remove water contaminants.
These enhanced single-walled carbon nanotubes are designed to treat water than any other conventional industrial materials like ceramics, activated carbons or silicon gel. In the journal of Environmental Science Water: Research and Technology researchers described the potentiality of this advanced technology. Over the past few decades, using of carbon nanotube has become so popular in fuel-cell research but, as a filter media, it would be the just first time in history.
Lead researcher and assistant professor of Chemistry and Materials Science from RIT, John-David Rocha said in a statement,“This aspect is new—taking knowledge of carbon nanotubes and their properties and realizing, with new processing and characterization techniques, the advantages nanotubes can provide for removing contaminants from water”. Rocha and Reginald Rogers are jointly making a water filter that would be cheap enough for everyday home use.
Rogers explained that the filter media is totally reusable. When the filter will become saturated, then users have to put that filter in a microwave only for 5 minutes. According to Phys, a carbon nanotube is 50,000 times thinner that the width of a human hair. In nanoscale carbon transforms itself into a quantum stage and defies the laws of physics.
Graphite is one of the most popular avatars of carbon, could be seen in any pencil lead. A graphite molecule is made of several layers of atoms and a single layer is called Graphene. To create a single carbon nanotube, scientists rolled up a sheet of Graphene. Scientists are hopeful that it would work perfectly as a filter media because water is the greatest enemy of the carbon nanotube. When the water will pass through the tube, all of the remaining organic compounds would stick to the tube except the water itself.
