Recent advances in 2D nanopores for desalination

摘要

Water shortage is a major problem facing the world today, although 70% of the earth is covered with water. With 95% of this water in seas and oceans, man has to find the most energy-efficient way of desalination for sustainable freshwater supply. Conventional desalination technologies such as reverse osmosis and thermal distillation involve large amounts of energy, especially for high salt rejection. In comparison, the discovery of two-dimensional materialssuch as graphene and its structural analogs boron nitride and molybdenum disulphide (MoS2) has fostered been tremendous progress for energy-saving desalination using nanopores of these materials. This article reviews the recent developments in this technology with experimental and molecular simulation literature survey over the past few years. It explains the role of nanopores in desalination in terms of structure, energy, cost-effectiveness and process efficiency.