Capillary-driven desalination in a synthetic mangrove

This is an innovative application of existing membrane technology that is cool to see! It’s great to see people thinking outside the box on these problems and emulating nature in smart ways.

Some people are possibly misinterpreting the potential impact of this, as mentioned in the article:

“For this reason, capillary-driven desalination is likely not a feasible alternative for large-scale desalination applications. Instead, we envision that synthetic mangrove devices could be integrated into urban infrastructure for passive stormwater management.”

I've always found natures ability to make selective membranes incredibly interesting. There are numerous applications where cheap selective membranes could make a significant difference. For example oxygen enriched combustion in power plants is a great way of reducing NOx and increasing efficiency.

Nature is the ultimate super-human technology available to us for free. We only have to formulate the right questions, and the answer is often there, ready to be reverse-engineered.