Instructions | Graphene & Diatom Desalination of Water

1

Step 1

Add to a rock tumbler barrel 1/5th full of alumina ball bearings the following
1 gram of high purity graphite
14 grams of diatomaceous earth
200mL of water
60mL of acetone
2

Step 2

Ball mill for 5 days
3

Step 3

Filter through a whatman number 1 filter, suprisingly the DE will naturally filter the graphene out and keep it from going through the filter.
4

Step 4

Filter whatever nasty water you want, the graphene will remove all the dissolved solids, allowing only pure water to exit the filter. Where as if you were just filtering graphite that had been ball milled in this manner the majority would go through the filter as it is too small to be screened out.
5

Step 5

Begin building the pressure vessel out of PVC piping.

Discussions

escdecker wrote 03/12/2019 at 22:22

In what form did you order the graphite? natural flake, a certain size mesh powder?

I was wanting to experiment with this also and have some ideas to try regarding cleaning it after it plugs up. I would share what I come up with but it would be helpful to get a good start and not repeat experiment. If you can share some of those details I would appreciate it. Thanks

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Meek The Geek wrote 05/18/2016 at 06:15

what sort of pressures do you need?

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MECHANICUS wrote 05/18/2016 at 08:17

Forgive me 99% of this stuff is failure, and there are zero updates for months because I have a ton of projects. 27 inches of mercury vacuum is about 15 psi at sea level so in the first demo not very much. I am experimenting with different ways to do this and I don't update the failures as it is a waste of time. My thinking is the interface between the SiO2 and the graphite are what is trapping ions and allowing water to pass via hydrogen bonding. I will update as soon as I figure out a better way to implement the filter if you have any ideas please let me know.

In the mean time please subscribe to my youtube and thanks for following here. This will help the tech get to the 1 billion people in the world without access to clean water.

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PointyOintment wrote 03/22/2016 at 19:05

> Begin building the pressure vessel out of PVC piping.

LOL

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MECHANICUS wrote 03/22/2016 at 20:38

yah it's a rough draft

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Graphene & Diatom Desalination of Water

Discussions

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