There are several ideas in response to a need that will become insistent in the coming years: the need for water purification and desalination.

The world will be thirsty: by 2025 there will be about 1.8 billion people living in arid places with contaminated water. The researchers of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at the University of Paderborn have recently published a research paper on Joule, analysing the best technologies for water purification.

One of the most innovative tools emerged was synchrotron X-rays, particularly useful for desalination and water purification, plus reverse osmosis and capacitive deionization, which are extremely complex to manage and a real challenge for the science of the future.

Reverse osmosis, specifically, forces the passage of water molecules from a more concentrated solution to a less concentrated one thanks to pressure, thus containing contaminants, salt and organic material. This process is difficult to fully understand and will involve specific studies. On the other hand, capacitive deionization removes charged ionic species from aqueous solutions. A technique that, again, requires in-depth studies by scientists, also in relation to climate cataclysms expected in the near future.