Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks? -A.T.

Moving Beyond Weapons to Clean Water

Graphic: David Cohen-Tanugi

Interview by Ben Johnson
Marketplace Tech for Monday, March 18, 2013

Defense contractor Lockheed Martin has discovered a way to make desalination 100 times more efficient. And that could have a big impact on bringing clean drinking water to the developing world.

The process is called reverse osmosis, and the material used is graphene -- a lot like the stuff you smudge across paper with your pencil.

"This stuff is so thin and so strong, it's a remarkable compound, it is one atom thick," says Lockheed Martin senior engineer John Stetson. "If you have a piece of paper that represents the thickness of graphene, the closest similar membrane is about the height of a room."

The new material essentially acts as a sieve, allowing water to pass though while salts remain behind. Graphene could make for smaller, cheaper plants that turn salt water into drinking water, but it could also have uses in war zones as a portable water desalinator.

"Lockheed really is concerned with the broadest aspects of global security [and] maintaining safe environments and that includes water," says Stetson.