I hope this works as proclaimed - the only two questions i have left are:
do traditional desalination techniques require more energy than boiling the equivalent amount of water? if so, this might indeed be a breakthrough.
and the second question: will the membrane ever need to be replaced?
"do traditional desalination techniques require more energy than boiling the equivalent amount of water?"
No, far less, because the end product is condensed liquid water (not vapor). When* the desalination method is distillation (evaporating + re-condensing), the heat used to evaporate water is released again when the steam is condensed, and can be recovered and reused. E.g. [1]. The real-world figure wikipedia cites is about 90 MJ/m^3, compared to about 2,250 MJ/m^3 for boiling water at STP [2]. The theoretical limit from thermodynamics -- the minimum energy needed to separate salt and water -- is about 3 MJ/m^3 for seawater [3] (or [4-5]).
*(as opposed to methods like reverse osmosis [6], which is forcing water through a filter with atom-sized holes -- no boiling involved)
No, because boiling the equivalent amount of water is the key energy required in distillation, which will also desalinate the water. It's unclear if this is actually in fact, much of a win.
