gy biotechnology professor Jongyoon Han.
Han and his colleagues have developed 7)ion concentration 8)polarization, which improves the efficiency of the filtering process by adding a small electrical charge to the salt and other impurities.
The chip removed 99% of the salt and other contaminants from samples of undrinkable water.
Han says the technology might one day be available as a personal water purification appliance or used to bring drinking water to communities by 9)scaling up the technology to create plates containing thousands of chips.
Han: And then run all of these little devices at the same time to get the flow rate at the levels of perhaps a hundred 10)milliliters per minute. That flow rate is the typical flow rate that you can get from the household water filtration devices.
Han would like to develop a way to power the devices so they can help bring water 11)in the wake of natural disasters, such as this year’s12)devastating earthquake in Haiti.
美国和韩国的研究人员展示了一种用纳米技术将海水转化成饮用水的方法。目前来说,这项新发明仅能净化少量海水。但科学家们称,该科技为将来耗电少的脱盐设备的面世铺平了道路,届时低电耗设备有望祛除大量海水中的盐分和杂质,从而为广大社区提供饮用水。
脱盐过程是在一个邮票面积大小的芯片上进行的。电流把带电盐粒子和其他杂质从海水中分离出来,从而把海水转换成饮用水。
传统工业中使用的脱盐设备采取反渗透的方式,把盐和其他杂质从海水中分离。美国麻省理工学院生物工程学教授韩俊允指出,这些设备价格昂贵,且高能耗,因此并不适用于众多低收入国家。
韩教授和他的同事开发出离子集中分离技术,为盐和杂质稍微充电,从而提高分离效率。
试验中,芯片可以祛除海水样本中99%的盐和杂质。
韩教授称,也许有一天,这项技术能运用到家庭水净化设备中,又或者制造出包含数千个这种芯片的大面板后,社区居民也能喝上经这种设备净化的水。
韩:所有这些小设备同时运作,一分钟也许能处理100毫升的水,这也是家用水滤化器的标准工作效率。
韩教授希望能为这些设备找到动力之源,这样它们就能在类似今年的海地大地震那样的重大自然灾害发生之后派上用场。
