Graphite-Powered Water Filtration

One of our favorite pencil life hacks doubled as a great survival tip.  This alternative use for a pencil could help you start a fire with your car battery.  This week, we’re taking a look at another life-saving use for a pencil, courtesy of National Public Radio: filtering salt water.

Scenes from films “Life of Pi” and “All is Lost” show that salt water can be filtered by the sun.  Just evaporate the salt water, trap the steam and let it condensate into drinkable water.

In real life, it isn’t that simple.  Using solar energy to filter salt water is extremely slow and inefficient.  The current process requires expensive equipment to concentrate the energy from the sun into a ‘hot spot.’

This is where the pencil comes in.  According to the article on NPR, an engineer at University of Houston has figured out that graphite can concentrate solar energy when it heats up.

A Sun Sponge

When graphite heats up, it becomes a “thin porous material that looks like a sponge.”  Like a sponge, the graphite is absorbent.  Unlike a sponge, it absorbs heat.

According to engineer Hadi Ghasemi, the graphite “creates steam at a low concentration of energy,” using solar energy to evaporate water.  The water gets into the graphite’s holes through capillary action, in the same way it does with the leaf of a plant.

The team of engineers is now figuring out how to use even less energy to filter the water and how to unclog the hot graphite’s pores after they have become clogged with salt.  As it is, though, the graphite does what much more expensive technologies do at a way cheaper rate.

Pencils and Survival

While graphite isn’t going to solve any water crises just yet, it may well be a means of survival for those stranded at sea with access to heat and graphite.  A cheap lens might help, too.

Keep checking the blog for more alternative uses for pencils.  The staple of creativity is becoming more useful all the time, it seems.  In the meantime, carouse our graphite pencils.