Hey Readers,
We have a lot of news and some innovations to elaborate on this week, so let’s get stuck in.
Diatoms + Aquaporins for the win!
Diatoms are cells that help with photosynthesis and are extremely stable because they build silica cell walls for mechanical protection. Aquaporins are protein water channels that move water across cell walls based on the osmotic gradient and stop the impurities from moving through with the water. However, the issue with aquaporins is that when there is any external pressure, the aquaporin breaks down. Now a Swedish company makes use of the properties of the diatom to stabilize aquaporins for use. The silica cell wall is situated right outside the cell membrane where the aquaporins and other membrane proteins are located. They are doing more testing, but if successful, they will have created a molecular water purifying method that uses no external power. Onward and upward!
Removing excess fluorides from water bodies
First off, there is fluorine in the drinking water to help with tooth health, however with excess fluorine can cause fluorosis, a condition that can weaken the teeth, and calcify tendons and ligaments. The other issue is that humans need to drink water with other elements or atoms in them to get the nutritional value. So how to separate out only the fluorine from the water and not strip it of its nutrients.
Now scientists at Tufts University in the US have created novel polymer membranes that can separate fluoride from chloride and other ions -- electrically charged atoms -- with twice the selectivity reported by other method. So now we can have strong teeth and not get too much of it!
Making electrodialysis desalination more efficient
Electro-dialysis has been suggested as a method of desalination for sometime now. Unfortunately, electrodialysis does not remove positive ions as efficiently as needed to make this a viable desalination method. Now scientists at Sandia National Laboratories have developed a new membrane, whose structure was inspired by a protein from algae called channelrhodopsin. Channelrhodopsin is an ion-transport protein that allows many different positively charged ions through, including sodium ions, potassium ions, calcium ions and protons, but no negatively charged ions.
The researchers found that the addition of phenylalanine, to an electrodialysis membrane inspired by channelrhodopsin, enabled it to better capture and remove positive ions, such as sodium. Specifically, they found that the five-layer film with phenylalanine had selectivity similar to that of the 10-layer film without phenylalanine, but without the increased resistance associated with thicker coatings. This means that the phenylalanine film can effectively purify water while using less electricity, thus making it more efficient.
Staying with desalination, there is a technique called Microbial Desalination that uses electro-active bacteria desalinate and sterilize water. This technique is becoming popular because it doesn’t require external power and is also a low-cost desalination option. A microbial desalination cell (MDC) is a biological electrochemical system that implements the use of electro-active bacteria to power desalination of water in situ, resourcing the natural anode and cathode gradient of the electro-active bacteria and thus creating an internal supercapacitor.
How? - Microbial Desalination Cells (MDC) concurrently treat wastewater and generate energy to achieve desalination. MDCs can produce around 1.8 kWh of bioelectricity from the handling of 1 m3 of wastewater. Such energy can be directly used to totally remove the salt content in seawater without external energy input, or partially reduce the salinity to lower substantially the amount of energy for a subsequent desalination treatment.
In Other News
The First feel good story was this from New Scientist that shows Mother Earth in all its glory - most of the carbon dioxide (715 million tons) released by Australia’s extreme wildfires of 2019-2020 has already been sucked out of the atmosphere by giant ocean algal blooms that were seeded by the nutrient-rich ash.
At a more localized level is this man and his two sons who work together to clean waterways in Mason City, Iowa - Keep doing great things Clean Water Boys!
In the not-so-good news piece, ten years of conflict in Syria has resulted in widespread destruction of water facilities across the country, so much so they have up to 40% less drinking water than a decade ago.
Families in Springfield, Missouri have filed a federal lawsuit alleging that Northrop Grumman concealed the full extent of trichloroethylene contamination in the local groundwater.
Staying with groundwater, a research team off the coast of Prince Edward Island in the Canadian waters has found, freshwater aquifers under the seafloor which they plan to use to support the citizens of the island.
Ford said this week they will invest $11Bn in building new electric vehicle plants, but as an interesting caveat - they aim to use no fresh water in vehicle assembly and tap recycled water instead. They say they will send no waste to landfills either.
A local Texas CrossFit gym has tied up with a nonprofit to raise money for water wells in Uganda. How will they raise the money? - by holding group CrossFit competitions. Learn more about the non-profit’s efforts here.
Finally a good outcome from a bad habit: since May 2020, when they launched legalized sports betting, the state of Colorado has collected nearly five times more money for water projects than anticipated! Money collected from gambling proceeds goes toward work meant to conserve water, protect natural habitats, improve infrastructure and more.
That is it for this week folks,
‘Til next Friday, Peace