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Meet a Chemist Repurposing Tech from the 1850s to Fight Water Scarcity

Year: 2026
Type: other
Abstract: RecommendationsA s climate change drives hotter, drier weather and a population boom strains the limited water supply in arid regions, a growing number of cities and countries are turning to desalination to meet their freshwater needs.The global demand for desalinated seawater is expected to double by 2030.More than 21,000 desalination plants are currently in operation, up from 14,000 in 2008.But the process that powers most of these plants, called reverse osmosis, is energy intensive and can be damaging to the marine environment.It requires large amounts of electricity (most often supplied by burning fossil fuels) to push water through a membrane and separate salt from H 2 O molecules, producing a heavy saline brine as a byproduct that's released back into the ocean.Juan Felipe Torres, a researcher at the Australian National University, has developed a technique for desalinating seawater that he believes can address all these issues at once.It's based on a method called thermodiffusion, which has been known to science since the 1850s but operates too slowly to be practical for most real-world applications.With Torres's engineering tweaks, the method is much faster.He's now working on patenting it and spreading it to various industries through his company, Soret Technologies.Diana Kruzman spoke with Torres about how thermodiffusion could outcompete reverse osmosis in certain cases and how it can be applied to lithium mining and chemical engineering.This interview was edited for length and clarity.What's the current state of desalination technology?The industry worldwide right now is relying on a very old technology.It's called reverse osmosis, and the first commercial plant in the world opened in California 60
DOI: 10.1021/acscentsci.6c00474
Language: English
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7151312934
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