High-permeability vacuum membrane distillation utilizing mechanically compressed carbon nanotube membranes.

Membranes for membrane distillation (MD) are mostly made of polymeric and ceramic materials. We demonstrate here that the laterally-compressed, vertically-aligned CNTs (VACNT) obtainable from a CNT forest are an excellent membrane material for vacuum membrane distillation (VMD). The VACNT structure provides interstices between CNTs for extracting vaporized water molecules, while efficiently filtering the impurity salts.