#200! - Al-Baydha, Groundwater, Redox Desal, Quantum Dots, Plasma and more...
Water Water Everywhere...
Hey Readers,
When we started this a few years ago, we never thought we’d get to 100 let alone 200, but here we are…still sharing the cool stuff from the world of water. As we head into the next century, we want to do more interviews, collaborations and perhaps audio formats. Let us know what you would be interested in seeing/ hearing in the next 100 to come. Hit us up in the comments or respond via email - either works.
With that said, let's get into the innovations & news from the world of water this week.
Innovations Roundup
Plasma setup to clean water better than before
With the aim of tackling the problem of the increasing presence of organic pollutants in waters, a group of researchers at the University of Córdoba have worked on methods of applying plasma to promote chemical cleaning processes. What does that mean? - they designed a plasma reactor which when interacting with water, generates oxidizing species capable of degrading organic compounds and killing microorganisms. They achieved this by altering the design of the surfatron, the metal device that mixes the energy from a microwave generator with the plasma to maintain it.
The other nuance here is that, rather than apply the plasma directly to the water, in their setup - between the water and the plasma there is a zone of air where numerous reactions occur due to collisions between the excited species and the molecules of oxygen, nitrogen and water vapor. In testing, this setup was able to reduce high concentrations of methylene blue dye in water, with very efficient results in terms of energy, achieving the complete elimination of the dye in just minutes.
CoFe quantum dots in graphene mesh to clean water
A paper published by Guangzhou University researchers speaks to a unique self-purifying water treatment system that they built utilizing Cobalt Ferrite (CoFe) quantum dots embedded in graphene nanowires. The catalyst's surface features electron-rich and electron-poor micro-regions, fostering a self-purification mechanism. What’s more this CoFeQds@GN-Nws catalyst system (yeah even we cannot extrapolate what all that means), utilizes the internal energy found in wastewater to clean the water.
This internal energy is created by the chemical reaction between the dissolved oxygen in the water and the bond energy of pollutants in water to realize the self-purification process of wastewater without additional oxidants or external energy. This process also oxidizes pollutants and activates dissolved oxygen into superoxide radical, enhancing pollutant removal. They go on to say that this device effectively eliminates more than 70% of different emergent pollutants from wastewater in less than two hours.
Redox Desalination (but energy efficient)
Researchers at NYU Tandon School of Engineering say that they have cracked the code on Redox Flow Desalination (RFD). RFD is an electrochemical technique to turns seawater into drinkable water and also serves as an energy-efficient storage solution for renewable energy. RFD solutions are being worked on because integrating energy storage and desalination, is pretty much promised land for such an energy intensive process. How does it work? - First, incoming seawater is divided into salinating and desalinating streams through a complex network of channels. These channels, separated by exchange membranes, facilitate electrochemical reactions, resulting in the extraction of positive-charged sodium (Na+) ions and freshwater generation.
By controlling the volume of incoming seawater, the system can be operated in single pass (one-time) operation or even in batch mode (aggregate and mass cleaning). On the energy storage front - in a separate chamber where brine and freshwater are mixed, the stored chemical energy can be converted into renewable electricity. Essentially, RFD systems act as a unique form of "battery," capturing excess energy from solar and wind sources and releasing it on demand, providing a sustainable supplement to other electricity sources.
News from Around the World
A group of researchers form across the globe have looked into the groundwater depletion across the world and the situation is pretty dire. There are however some positive signs of localised efforts to remedy the groundwater situation working. Read more about it in the Scientific American as well.
Sometimes we don’t have to editorialize - New research led by a team at the University of California, Berkeley, used machine learning to more accurately predict which waterways are protected by the Clean Water Act. The analysis found that a 2020 Trump administration rule removed Clean Water Act protection for one-fourth of U.S. wetlands and one-fifth of U.S. streams, and also deregulated 30% of watersheds that supply drinking water to household taps. The research was published in Science.
It’s not all bad news, here’s the story of Al-Baydha in the Saudi Desert and how their efforts brought back the green cover and is helping restore what little groundwater they have, by collecting tiny amounts of rain they get.
That is it for the 200th edition, we still cannot believe we got here. Time truly does fly by!
Until next week
Peace!