Dear Readers,
This Friday we have an eclectic mix of stuff, let us know what you think of it. Conversations help educate us too!
Math to predict water pollution
Within petrochemical-driven economies, testing and managing the fuel waste seeping into the water bodies is incrementally harder. The proper analysis of toxic waste materials has been difficult to achieve without complex and lengthy testing. As such there's always a testing backlog. Now an Assistant Professor and his team of researchers at the University of British Columbia's Okanagan campus (UBCO) has uncovered a new, faster and more reliable, method of analyzing these samples - Math!
Huh? - They used fluorescence spectroscopy to quickly detect key toxins in the water. They then ran the results through a modeling program that accurately predicts the composition of the water. The composition can be used as a benchmark for further testing of other samples. This way over time by testing for what can be seen through spectroscopy, whatever else is in the water can be assessed by the modeling program.
Sometimes the kids do have the answer…literally
In the U.S., millions of homes, especially those in low-income communities, receive drinking water through lead-containing pipes. While remediation efforts are ongoing, there is still a long way to go. Last week, high school students in San Diego and their instructor demonstrated a solution to the problem — an inexpensive faucet attachment that removes this toxic metal. The students 3D printed the attachment and a 3-inch-tall filter housing, using a biodegradable plastic. Their final step was to fill the cartridges with a mixture of calcium phosphate and potassium iodide powder.
Why? - Calcium phosphate binds with the dissolved lead in water to form lead phosphate and free calcium. The calcium, which is harmless, ends up in the water, and the lead phosphate, which is an inert solid, is trapped inside the filter by a nylon screen on the bottom of the unit. Once the reaction capacity of the calcium phosphate is reached, dissolved lead reacts with potassium iodide, forming lead iodide, which turns the water yellow. This serves as an indicator that lead is still present as an impurity. Not wanting to rely on the human eye, they added a tiny spectrophotometer with a single-wavelength LED to the bottom of the filter cartridge identifies the yellow color of the lead iodide.
Hydrogel for solar desalination of water
Researchers from the Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Xiamen University in China have built a system that uses sunlight to sanitize seawater with high energy efficiency compared to other similar methods (more than 90%) while also avoiding typical snags. As with solar desalination, it utilizes sunlight to heat the surface of the water, thereby evaporating the water and dividing the salty or polluted counterparts from the water molecules, which then vaporize into the atmosphere to enter the innate cycle of condensation to turn into clean, consumable water.
Two gels were united in an oil-in-water emulsion to form what they called an organohydrogel. This gel can change between phases of matter but is mainly liquid held in a network of molecular chains. By dosing the organohydrogel with carbon nanotubes, the scientists formed “hot spots” that can locally concentrate solar light to the water’s surface, stopping the dissipation of heat all over the area. How does it do? - In the trial experiment, the system evaporated approximately 2.4 kg of water per square meter per hour and could continue for 240 hours without requiring additional disposal—even in circumstances of “tremendous oil contamination,” said one of study authors.
Okra/ Tamarind as a flocculant for microplastics
Anyone here who’s spent some time in the kitchen knows that in many cuisines, okra serves as a master thickener of stews and soups. Now, researchers at Tarleton State University in Texas, have demonstrated that the gooey extract from the okra plant can remove microplastics from wastewater. They tested polysaccharide extracts from fenugreek, cactus, aloe vera, okra, tamarind and psyllium — all of which are food-grade materials — as flocculants to capture microplastics.
They tested compounds from the individual plants, as well as in different combinations on various microplastic-containing water samples. The researchers found that polysaccharides from okra paired with those from fenugreek could best remove microplastics from ocean water, whereas polysaccharides from okra paired with those from tamarind worked best for freshwater samples.
In Other news
In a shocker, (Not!) the director of Utilities for the city of Midland believes produced water could be a “game-changer” for West Texas. Given how much produced water the Permian basin generates, one day of produced water is about half a year of water in the city of Midland, so if only they could find a way to purify it for reuse. SMH!
In some good news two colleagues at an energy company converted technology being used there for groundwater remediation, to provide potable water for more than 500 children in a Haitian orphanage. One of the rare stories of energy companies doing some good for the disadvantaged.
A study conducted by World Wildlife Fund (WWF) says that an average person could be consuming one credit card worth (5 grams) of plastic each week. The ‘No Plastic in Nature: Assessing Plastic Ingestion from Nature to People’ commissioned by WWF and carried out by the University of Newcastle, Australia, found we are consuming 1,769 tiny particles of plastic every week.
Now the EPA says that agricultural runoff is really the leading cause of water pollution in the U.S. today. If only there were solutions for that!
In a related piece of news, the state of California have finally set a standard for hexachromium contamination, the standard would be a first in the nation to specifically target hexavalent chromium. Only 22 years after Julia Roberts did a movie about it!
Another crew is traveling from Orlando to Ukraine to get them access to clean water. May their tribe grow!
Alaska is a land of beautiful wilderness, snow and ice, but unfortunately not much clean water. Now the EPA has announced it will help fund Alaska’s $57.1 million plan for key drinking water projects and $93.7 million plan to improve wastewater infrastructure.
And in another first from Netflix, they teamed up with Frosty Pop and Charity:Water to launch an educational video game that challenges you to walk miles in sub-Saharan Africa to find water while dealing with poachers, windstorms and other hazards.
That’s it for this week
‘Til next Friday,
Peace