Maybe something bad maybe is going to happen at Lockheed? Gotta pump up those share prices before the big sell.
It wouldn't surprise me if carbon nano-materials are the new asbestos, or some other sort of catastrophic liability is lurking in the wings.
In any case, current reverse osmosis materials are pretty good. Even with a thermodynamically ideal membrane, the energy cost of reverse osmosis is still high.
It's possible forward osmosis plants are more efficient when the energy source is a heat engine like a fossil fuel or nuclear plant because energy that might otherwise be dumped as heat can contribute to this process. The same might be true of solar desalinization.
Here's a DOE overview of membrane water processing technologies:
http://www.netl.doe.gov/technologies/pwmis/techdesc/membrane/index.html
Making water to safe to drink is a task comparable to delivering food. People don't starve because there's not enough food in the world, they starve because the distribution of food is impeded. Similar problems exist with safe drinking water supplies.
The problem of overall water supplies, for example water used for agriculture, industrial, and domestic use, is of a different nature. Beyond rainfall, delivering safe water requires a fully functional society, and delivering water to places where it must be pumped "uphill," either literally, or for long distances, or by some process of desalinization, requires a fully functional industrial society and a great deal of energy.
A simple improvement in membrane technology isn't any kind of game changer.
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