Very cool, my dad’s alma mater Rice putting good work in.
Graphene has some.wondrous properties it has pores so small only H2O can pass all other ions stay on the other side...salt water >>>> fresh water with a fraction of the energy costs of RO or flash evap.
The material also has a interesting ability to split hydrogen atoms of different atomic weight...protium, deuterium, tritium this is of huge importance to the nuclear power industry. Graphene reduces the energy and production cost for heavy water by a factor of 100. This makes the already cheapest nuclear power technology CANDU and makes it even cheaper. CANDU means Canadian deuterium uranium it is the only reactor that can burn raw natural uranium as fuel at half the cost of PWR tech.
CANDU also burns up used PWR fuel doubling the energy you get from a fuel pellet while reducing the long term transuranium elements. CANDU can burn MOX made with military PU destroying it in the process, with thorium CANDU can breed U233 in a self sustaining cycle that will power humans for billions of years due to thorium being five times more prevalent than U238/35 in the crust.
Graphene solves two in humans species level problems , how to cheaply and at one energy cost turn seawater/ ground water brines into freshwater.
The second is how to mass produce cheap nuclear power that doesn’t need weapons technology which is what enrichment is ask the Iranians about that. CANDU uses raw uranium no enrichment needed the water is enriched to deuterium oxide aka heavy water. Graphene cuts the cost by two orders of magnitude.
A CANDU has been built in 60 months from first pour to powerlines power. The largest expense of a CANDU is the 300 tonnes of heavy water it needs for a 900 megawatt reactor. It’s fuel cost is already half a PWR so cheap that seawater raw uranium at $600 lb wouldn’t raise the cost but a half cent or so less if you mix in spent PWR fuel and burn both using the seawater uranium as the fertile and the PWR as the fissile material.
Better yet use both use the CANDU to power the desal stack with the graphene membranes inside with the waste heat of the reactors turbines driving a secondary rapid spray evaporation desalination plant that has zero brine discharge the output of RSEVP is solid sea salt itself a valuable commodity.