#100 - Peace in the Middle East?, AWG, Recycling, Sponge Cities, Solar Stills and more...
Water Water Everywhere...
Wooah! A few years ago if you had told us that we would get to one hundred (that’s 100) of these newsletters, we’d have scoffed. Now, we don’t know how we can stop ourselves from churning ‘em out! In the true spirit of Thanksgiving, we are thankful to you, our readers, for keeping us honest and engaging with us to deliver this content every week.
We have a few different stories included for #100, but there’s still the grab bag of cool innovations and news from the world of water to discuss so let’s get stuck in.
First up are the masters of society-level re-engineering - China. They have acknowledged and estimated the water-related problems that come from global warming (not just in public statements!). The flood or drought nature of the water situation ahead of them means that they are now working on a mitigation strategy - Sponge Cities! What is that, you ask? - A ‘sponge city’ is a nature-based solution which uses the landscape to retain water at its source, slow down water flow and clean it throughout the process.
Basically they want to control urban flooding, water pollution and recycle rainwater. They will retain rainwater in urban areas by waterproofing the paved floor so that part of it evaporates and the rest is gradually drained. Beyond the waterproofing, more trees are planted and smart buildings are constructed to adapt to the city's sponge. This means roofs are covered in grass for greater absorption of water and buildings are also painted in light colours to reflect more heat instead of absorbing it. You can also check out more of these eco-cities here.
We have discussed solar desalination stills in the past, and each time we have mentioned that the cost of manufacturer vs. the volume of output does not make sense from a scale or unit economics perspective. Now the smart folks at MIT have successfully demonstrated an experimental salt-rejecting evaporation structure that can operate continuously under sunlight to generate clean vapor while floating in a saline body of water such as the oceans and seas.
The evaporation structure is coupled with a low-cost polymer film condensation cover to produce freshwater at a rate of 2.5 L/m2/day, enough to satisfy individual drinking needs. But that’s not the best part! They say that the entire system’s material cost is $3 per square meter! $3 for 2.5 liters is today’s Poland Spring kind of money.
Method to make desalination more efficient - Potentially
Staying with desalination as the method of choice to get clean water to the masses, this is a discovery that will help create innovation to improve the energy efficiency/ scalability of current desalination efforts. This joint research effort from Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia, and The Delft University of Technology, Netherlands, identified the molecular mechanisms for desalination techniques.
More specifically they found out how and why water conduction (at a molecular level) in carbon nanotubes is enhanced with the introduction of a conical or hourglass-shaped inlet. Why does this help? - Well simply put, there are 2 main levers to making desalination more financially feasible, one - reduce the power consumption or two - reduce the friction in the desalination process for increased water flow. This finding will definitely impact the latter and help in the design of novel RO (reverse osmosis) systems that utilize carbon nanotubes-based membranes.
Bonus Feature
We’re not the only ones out there working on finding the good things in the world of water, so for #100 we wanted to share some of the other good stuff we have seen recently around our two favorite concepts - water recycling and atmospheric water generation.
Alanna Maya over at waterworld.com has put together a list of the varied methods of converting and using wastewater. Do give it a read, some of these we have discussed before but it’s a great refresher for everything out there.
Christopher McFadden at InterestingEngineering.com has also done some stellar research to put together an explainer of the concept of Atmospheric Water generation as well as a list of the coolest AWG solutions out there. There are a lot of cool ones, but the one that we wish would make it to mainstream is the personal use water bottle that can generate water out of thin air. (Sadly it seems this crowdfunded idea has bit the dust, but definite food for thought)
In Other News
First up, furthering middle eastern cooperation efforts, Israel will send clean water to drought struck Jordan, and in return Jordan will generate clean energy using their abundant solar power potential and send that the opposite way. More specifically a solar plant in the Jordanian desert will generate power for Israel, in exchange for a desalination plant in Israel that will provide Jordan with water. Talk about the Middle East showing us the way to get along!
A 10yr old green entrepreneur from New York, collects and recycles bottles and cans from local businesses, and then shares a cut of the proceeds with Charity: water, a nonprofit getting clean water access to folks the world over. Out of the mouths of babes!
We honestly cannot thank you enough for reading these newsletters and helping us achieve our goal which is #educatetoempower. Thank you all!
That is it for this week, Happy Thanksgiving! and until next Friday,
Peace