Clean water: separate, detect, recover.

The starting point

The challenge is to remove pollutants without consuming disproportionate resources. Nanostructured membranes can assist separation, and adsorbents provide surfaces that retain certain substances. Sensors help detect them; detection is not the same as removal.

What we know

These are technology families at different stages of maturity. The supplied material describes mechanisms and opportunities, but does not justify a universal decontamination percentage or effectiveness against every pollutant.

Questions to ask

Compare with conventional treatment per cubic metre of water of equivalent quality: energy, regeneration, membrane lifetime and concentrated waste. Possible release of the material must also be measured.