Hello everyone!
This week we talk about a lot of innovations, so we grouped them into three to-go cups for ease of consumption (see what we did there?) - Water Access, Water Testing & Energy from water.
If you have any suggestions, or if we got something wrong, please hit reply & let us know. If you like our newsletter, please do recommend it to others.
Disclaimer - the views expressed herein are ours and ours alone.
Creative ways to clean water access in Africa
In this newsletter we have talked about some pretty innovative methods to get water, but the below three are methods created for areas with little to no access to power or infrastructure.
Catching Fog - No that’s not a typo…in Southwest Morocco, a women-led NGO Dar Si Hmad taps into the often foggy conditions around Mount Boutmezguida, uses 17,222 square feet of nets held together by two pillars, to capture fog in its honeycomb-like structure before condensing it into liquid. The captured water trickles down into a conduit connected to pipes that take it to the local households.
Tapping into the fog or humidity in Ethiopia, the Warka Tower named after the giant, wild fig tree native to the region, is an example of biomimicry for water harvesting from the air. Installed in areas with high amounts of fog or humidity, the Warka Tower depends on meteorological conditions and aims to distribute 40-80 liters of drinking water every day. Its canopy shape also doubles as a shaded space for community gatherings.
Drilling without Power - The Village Drill is a lightweight, portable drill that operates using manpower rather than machine power. It was first designed in 2011 by engineers at Brigham Young University in Utah. For a one-off cost of $25,000, it can produce dozens of wells each year. There are now over 105 Village Drills operating in 36 countries, including Somalia, Bolivia, and Papua New Guinea.
Innovations in Water Testing
Water Testing is in an ongoing triathlon - first to test all bodies at a regular frequency, second to get the test results analysed quickly enough to act on, and third to update the tests taking into account the ever increasing set of contaminants found in water bodies the world over. Below are some innovations that tackle some of the triathlon legs.
$2 MIT Testing Paddle - a mechanical engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and her colleagues have created a low-tech sample-collection device that costs less than two dollars to make. It consists of a plastic handle tipped by propeller-like attachments made from polymer mesh, which contain small packets of absorbent resin beads that attract heavy metal ions. Users stir the device in water and then blot or air-dry it. Dunking the attachments in an acid solution releases the absorbed ions, which can then be measured.
Artificial biosensors - Testing water samples for complex contaminants require expensive equipment and can almost never be completed at site. A potential alternative can be found in artificial biosensors or molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs). While staying away from the super technical, a biosensor is made up of two main components: a receptor and transducer. The receptor is specific to one particle or molecule, say arsenic. Once the target molecule has bound to the receptor, a change is elicited and a signal generated that a transducer turns into a signal that we can read in near real time. Why artificial biosensors? - because naturally created sensors while promising are not very stable or durable. Read more here.
Urine to find Arsenic! - Emma Price a junior from Camdenton High School, Missouri was researching arsenic testing on drinking water in her home state and found a cheap solution to test for arsenic levels. First heat urine in a microwave to activate carbon dots, then add to drinking water sample. This solution will create either a cloudy or clear mixture. If it is clear, there is a high level of arsenic in that sample. This solution from waaay out of the box has got her a spot in the National Stockholm Water Prize competition, one of the most prestigious water awards out there.
Photocatalysis to derive Power from Water
Fuel generated using Optical Fibers - Researchers at the University of Southampton have converted optical fibers normally used in telecommunications to split water into its constituents hydrogen and oxygen using solar power alone. Ground-breaking technology coats the inside of microstructured optical fiber canes (MOFCs) with a photocatalyst which with light splits the hydrogen atoms from the water molecules.
They coat the fibers with titanium oxide, decorated with palladium nanoparticles. This approach allows the coated canes to simultaneously serve as both host and catalyst for the continuous indirect water splitting, with methanol as a sacrificial reagent.
Perovskite cells for continuous energy - Researchers at Rice University in Houston, Texas have integrated catalytic electrodes and perovskite solar cells that, when triggered by sunlight, produce electricity. Perovskites are crystals with cubelike lattices that are known to harvest light. While not an entirely new idea, the lab packaged a perovskite layer and the electrodes into a single module that, when dropped into water and placed in sunlight, produces hydrogen with no further input.
"With a clever system design, you can potentially make a self-sustaining loop," said Rice materials scientist Jun Lou. "Even when there's no sunlight, you can use stored energy in the form of chemical fuel. You can put the hydrogen and oxygen products in separate tanks and incorporate another module like a fuel cell to turn those fuels back into electricity."
That’s all for this week folks, as always thoughts, feedback are most welcome. Also please do share this good news.
Stay safe! And have a great weekend!