Monday, September 12, 2005
New idea - Aquaporin desalination
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The next small thing
From the article:
The next small thing
From the article:
- You probably haven't heard of aquaporins. They keep you alive. The tiny molecular valves stud the surface of every cell in your body, regulating internal water pressure. One aquaporin molecule can selectively admit a million molecules of aqua pura - pure water - into a cell every second, while excluding everything else, including the sodium and chloride atoms that bond to make common salt.
In his blue-sky dreaming, Dr Terry Turney, director of CSIRO's Nanotechnology Centre in Clayton, sees an ultra-thin polymer membrane studded with billions of aquaporins. On one side is seawater, on the other, fresh. Each square metre of the biosynthetic membrane transforms 260,000 litres of seawater a day into fresh water - orders of magnitude more than any current desalination technology.
Nature's miraculously selective nano-valve, perfected over 3.8 billion years of evolution, could one day irrigate deserts, provide thirsty cities and country towns with fresh water on demand and restore life to dying rivers.
'We don't know how to make an aquaporin membrane yet, but it's a Holy Grail of nanotechnology,' Dr Turney said.
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That's so ironic. I just learned about aquaporins two weeks ago. This seems like a great idea except that they are a feature of cell membranes which are composed of phospholipid bilayers that may be about 60 angstoms thick (don't remember for sure). Anyway if it is likely that if this idea will work on a macro scale, a way to suspend small regions of phospholipid bilayer in a much stronger matrix needs to be figured out.
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