Graphene Oxide Membranes for Terrestrial and Celestial Water Purification

Freshwater availability has significantly declined in recent years due to a shifting hydrosphere and increased irrigation. Reverse osmosis (RO) desalination plants can increase fresh water supply, but high costs result from the high pressures required to do so, stifling widespread adoption. Analogously, the water recovery system onboard the International Space Station (ISS) suffers from negative impacts on performance, hampering efforts to reduce resupply of potable water from Earth. Additionally, NASA has directed further improvements to these systems to bring deep space missions to reality. The solution to these terrestrial and celestial problems could be provided by graphene oxide (GO) membranes, which have been shown to reject ions on par with RO membranes while maintaining high flux at substantially reduced pressures due to their unique, layered architecture. This paper discusses key concepts behind GO membranes as well as their potential applications. Preliminary experimental results are also presented and discussed.