FASTER, PLEASE: Carbon-based filter which turns seawater into drinking water could help millions.

Reporting their findings in the Nature Nanotechnology journal, researchers from the University of Manchester have claimed that the process of desalination – filtering salt-water to produce fresh water – could lead to cheaper filtration systems in the developing world.

They explained that by controlling the size of the pores in the membranes the team was able to filter out common salts passing through the material.

“Realization of scalable membranes with uniform pore size down to atomic scale is a significant step forward and will open new possibilities for improving the efficiency of desalination technology,” Rahul Nair, professor of material physics at the University of Manchester, said in a statement.

If I’m understanding this technology correctly, it has far wider purification applications than just desalinating seawater.