Now they’ve teamed up and received a grant for $184,000 from the Qatar National Research Fund to change the world of water purification by making it more efficient and less expensive.
“This work can be very transformative,” said Hu of the joint project called “Mechanistic study of using polymer-modified graphene oxide nanocomposites for controlling CaSO4 scaling and biofouling on reverse osmosis membrane.”
“I want to try to develop technologies that are useful to society,” Rodrigues said. “This is one of them because the water problem is a worthwhile problem that affects lots of people. We’re having more water scarcity, so desalination is a good alternative for using the water from the ocean. It’s an alternative to get clean water.”