Graphene turns whiskey clear
Credit: National Graphene Institute/University of Manchester
A study published in Nature Materials by researchers at Manchester’s National Graphene Institute shows that graphene-oxide membranes can be tailored to allow specific molecules to pass through pass through by simply making them ultra thin.
Manchester scientists demonstrated that graphene-oxide membranes can be designed to completely remove various organic dyes as small as a nanometre dissolved in methanol, turning whiskey clear.
The team tailored the membrane to allow all solvents to pass through but without compromising it’s ability to sieve out the smallest of particles. This new research allows for expansion in the applications of graphene based membranes from sea water desalination to organic solvent nanofiltration (OSN). Unlike sea water desalination, which separate salts from water, OSN technology separates charged or uncharged organic compounds from an organic solvent.
The graphene-oxide sheets are assembled in such a way that pinholes formed during the assembly are interconnected by graphene nanochannels, which produces an atomic-scale sieve allowing the large flow of solvents through the membrane.
