Evidence Alignment and Transfer Boundaries in Thermally Driven Carbon-Membrane Desalination

Abstract

Progress in thermally driven carbon-membrane desalination depends on more than accumulating favorable results. This critical synthesis connects a monolayer array of carbon nanotubes as nanoscale transport pores with coupling a temperature gradient with graphene-channel surface wettability and asks how measurement choices, boundary conditions, and decision costs shape the interpretation of both. The analysis combines two focal publications with 12 previously verified sources and organizes the evidence around thermal driving, surface wettability, pore architecture, selectivity, and membrane fabrication. Rather than pooling incompatible outcomes, it compares research questions, representations, controls, and validation envelopes. Across the evidence base, the decisive issue is alignment: thermal driving shapes what is observed, surface wettability shapes how it is compared, and membrane fabrication governs whether the conclusion can be transferred. Uncertainty is most informative when reported as part of the result rather than treated as a postscript. The contribution is a decision-oriented synthesis that connects method selection to failure cost and treats reproducibility, provenance, and bounded generalization as first-order design requirements.