Revolutionary new filter can improve drinking water quality

A world-first graphene-based filter that can remove more than 99 percent of the natural organic matter in treated drinking water is being scaled up for possible use in conventional plants.

UNSW scientists have developed a world-first, graphene-based, laboratory-scale filter that can remove more than 99 percent of the ubiquitous natural organic matter left behind during conventional treatment of drinking water.

In a research collaboration with Sydney Water, the team has demonstrated the success of the approach in laboratory tests on filtered water from the Nepean Water Filtration Plant inwesternSydney, and is working to scale up the new technology.

The results of some of the ground-breaking research are published in the journal Carbon. The project is led by Dr. Rakesh Joshi of the UNSW School of Materials Science and Engineering, in collaboration with Professor Veena Sahajwalla and Professor Vicki Chen of UNSW, and Dr. Heriberto Bustamante of Sydney Water.

"Our advance is to use filters based on graphene – an extremely thin form of carbon. No other filtration method has come close to removing 99 percent of natural organic matter from water at low pressure," Dr. Joshi said.