Scalability of Graphene Carbon-Fiber Aerogel for Desalination

Abstract

As of 2018, 66% of the world’s population lived in water scarcity conditions for at least 1 month out of the year [1]. With 97% of the world’s water supply in the form of salt water, desalination offers a meaningful option to expand the water supply for the world’s population [2]. Desalination is accomplished using a variety of technologies, including filtration, which is an area of promising research and development. Carbon-based materials are known to serve as good filters, making graphene carbon-fiber aerogel, a novel template-free material developed by the Arnold Research Group, a promising candidate for filtration based desalination. This work will focus on designing a series of experiments to explore the various mechanisms behind filtration using graphene carbon-fiber aerogel based on the theoretical modeling and experimental research in literature. The results from the experiments and subsequent analysis using a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) and Energy Dispersive X-Ray Spectroscopy (EDS) revealed successful filtration in the four experimental techniques that were designed, based on the EDS mapping demonstrating uniform distribution of sodium and chloride ions on the aerogel after the experiments. The experimental results also suggested the possible mechanisms behind filtration using graphene carbon-fiber aerogel but do not definitively identify the exact mechanism or mechanisms, which is an area of future research. Additional research and experimentation on the filtration mechanisms and improving filtration efficiency are areas of future work to forward the application of graphene carbon-fiber aerogel for desalination.