Hello everyone!
This week we have a look at wave energy, magic sand, steroids and more isotopic stuff. Enjoy, share subscribe and stay safe out there.
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Disclaimer - the views expressed herein are ours and ours alone.
Waste to Water to Waste to…closed loop wastewater recycling
A team of engineers at the University of South Florida, have built a ‘human wastewater converter’ within a mini-shipping container, that they call NEWgenerator. This system is based on anaerobic membrane bioreactor technology and comes with solar panels and a hydroponics system to close out the cycle. What is this cycle? - recycling wastewater into clean water, energy and nutrients.
First, the water is extracted using membrane filtration, then treated for irrigation and flushing toilets. Second, the organic waste is converted into plant fertilizer. Third, the methane gas is captured as an energy source. The water is supplied to an e-toilet for flushing, from where the wastewater is collected and sent back to the NEWgenerator. To paraphrase one of the researchers: “waste water can help us create a circular economy where we deal with the problem, recycle everything and provide a renewable resource to communities.”
Bromide Treatment solution for Transported water
This one is a bit of stretch in every sense, but bear with us. Water that is transported over long distance water lines tends to develop significant bacteria contamination. This is most commonly seen in livestock farming due to the feed water systems complexity. This also tends to happen in hospital and other complex piping systems for drinking water. The current solution in use is ultra-filtration, which provides single use filtration but no ongoing measure to control water microbial build-up.
This manufacturer has launched its HaloPure technology water purification and disinfection solution. This tech has the unique ability to not only treat raw incoming water, but also maintain an ongoing sanitised environment throughout the water line. The system contains a porous, highly cross-linked polymeric brominated resin with a high surface area which eliminates any micro-organisms in the water and then releases hypobromous acid to maintain ongoing microbial control that, in turn, prevents pathogenic micro-organisms from reproducing. The success of this base technology in managing disinfection processes during the pandemic have resulted in it being expanded to trials at hospitals.
We have talked in the past about microplastics, micropollutants and all manner of micro-organisms that we didn’t know to look for in our water supply, but are day by day joining the long list of potentially life threatening things in the environment around us. Case in point - steroid hormones. They end up in wastewater through drugs that people ingest. While their mass per liter of water is just a few nanograms currently, these substances can be harmful to health and the environment, even in these small quantities.
They were also difficult to detect, due to their low concentrations and tiny sized molecules, which meant that they could not be filtered out of the water with conventional purification techniques. Researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have developed a new filtration system composed of a polymer membrane with an additional layer of exceptionally small activated carbon particles. The water is purified by the membrane filtration, and then the hormone molecule binds with the tiny carbon particles. In testing, a 2 millimeter thick activated carbon layer with a particle diameter of 80 micrometer (1/millionth of a meter) removed 96% of the hormone found in the water sample. Now the scientists will increase the oxygen content in the activated carbon to enhance levels of water flow at low pressure and push them closer to a 99% removal rate.
This Boston based company have devised a truly novel source of power for a desalination process - Water. More specifically they use a wave energy converter to power pumps that generate the high pressure seawater needed to effectively run a reverse osmosis (RO) desalination system. Seawater once pre-treated to prevent any debris and sand particles from damaging the membranes is pumped using the wave energy converter at high pressure into the RO desalination system where the clean water is filtered out. The waste brine is then led back into the sea as shown in the depiction below.
Due to the off-the-grid nature of its power source, it can be readily deployed in remote areas or disaster hit areas, with no need of an external power source. That said, wave energy is itself a nascent field that will take time to achieve its full potential.
Rain water harvesting with Magic Sand
A South African and Chinese business collaboration have developed a technology that changes the properties of ordinary desert sand, which makes it retain water while allowing air to pass through it. They say this ‘magic sand’ has the potential to harvest and store rainwater, which in turn will green arid desert areas. All without the need for energy input.
The breathable sand technology consists of regular sand particles, coated using their ‘proprietary’ technology. By this method the sand becomes hydrophobic (retains water), while allowing air to circulate freely, which is unlike other hydrophobic materials. They say a thin layer of this treated sand reduces water usage for agriculture, forestation or gardening by 80%.
Isotopes to find the Source….of contamination
Last week we talked about nuclear isotopes to find groundwater. This week we wanted to share that scientists in Australia, have used a similar technique to identify the contaminants in a groundwater source. They found that routine monitoring of stable and radioactive isotopes and contaminants of emerging concern (CECs), provided accurate information in identifying the source of pollutants in a water body. You can read more about it in their published paper here.
They go on to talk up the possibility of using 'contaminants of emerging concern' (CECs) as a tool to identify wastewater contamination from other sources like from pharmaceuticals, personal care products, food ingredients and herbicides. Why is this good? - Right now, we are limited to saying if there are pollutants or contaminants in the groundwater/ water body, they can be identified. Tracking each one to their source and thereby taking action at the source has always been extremely hard. This technology could flip that problem on its head.
That’s it for this week. Have a great weekend y’all!