Chemistry- Purifying Water

In our search for prosperity, growth and success, we are destroying the system that we as human are completely dependent upon. Population growth, water-intensive agriculture and economic development are using water faster than it can be replenished. Our Earth is a place where beauty exists, a place where 6.6 billion people and 15 million other species live, a place filled with 1.4 cubic kilometers of water. Although 70% of the planet’s surface is blanketed with deep oceans water, freshwater only form less than 3% of the total water and the rest are saltwater. Besides that, only 30% of the freshwater are not being lock up in ice cups and glaciers. Another 20% are in certain areas that are too remote for human to access and the remaining 80% comes from the monsoon or floods. That leaves us with less than 1% of usable water from lakes, rivers and underground sources. Nevertheless, Science has helped mankind to solve this problem and one of the current approaches being explored in many countries, including South Africa is nanotechnology.
Nanotechnology has developed widely in the past few years and was able to create new materials with a great range of potential applications. One of these new materials are carbon nanotubes and researchers find that these tubes can be used to clean the polluted water. Nano tubes are molecular-scale and are wrapped with graphitic layers. http://ipn2.epfl.ch/CHBU/NTprimer.htm http://ipn2.epfl.ch/CHBU/NTprimer.htm

They are called “Nano” because of their sizes that are roughly billion times smaller than a meter. Normally they are very thin and have hollow cylindrical structures made out of carbon atoms. However, they still exist in various shapes such as cylinders, spheres, cones, tubes and also complicated shapes. Carbon nanotubes have exceptional thermal, electrical and mechanical properties, allowing them to be widely used in numerous industries.
This device works through a filtration process called size exclusion. Size