Water

It didn’t command headlines but an important piece of legislation passed recently that involves water research. The House of Representatives on April 23 passed H.R. 1145, the National Water Research and Development Initiative Act of 2009. It’s designed to coordinate national research-and-development efforts regarding water use, supply and demand. The problem is Americans are drinking a lot of tapwater containing trace quantities of prescription drugs and other complex chemical compounds. Currently there is no long-term plan to address this issue and what level of drugs pose health concerns to the public. In line with investigating that problem, it’s also important to study how these compounds can be removed from our drinking-water sources. The...

Researchers at the University of Minnesota reported recently that the production of ethanol fuelstocks may consume as much as three times more water than previously thought, depending on where they’re grown. They found that ethanol fuelstock grown in Iowa uses the least water — about 6 gallons of water for each gallon of ethanol. While fuelstock grown in Minnesota uses about 19 gallons of water per gallon of ethanol. And that’s just on the farm. The researchers found that total water use in the production of a single gallon of ethanol is up to 2,100 gallons of water — from farm to fuel pump — depending on the regional irrigation practice in growing corn. Although a dozen states in the Corn Belt consume less...

Published in 1968 "The Population Bomb" became an enormously influential book, postulating, among other things, that humanity's population growth, at current rates of expansion, would within perilously few centuries become a spherical ball of human flesh expanding at the speed of light in all directions into the universe. Like other such doomsday tracts, the Population Bomb extrapolated select demographic trends into the future, and predicted catastrophic shortages - land, food, energy, water, even the air itself. Now we know better. We know, for example, that greater overall prosperity combined with female literacy - both ineluctable trends - lead to declining human populations, not...

The U.S. water market is $95 billion ($425 billion globally). Of that $95 billion, $24 billion is spent on industrial wastewater purification and recovery. Innovative water technology startup Crystal Clear Technologies has developed a novel approach to separate out toxic contaminants such as arsenic, copper, uranium and selenium. The technology is specifically relevant to industrial smelters, power plants and mining operations. "We're the first company doing this kind of approach," says James Harris, CEO of Crystal Clear Technologies. The company uses a low-cost biopolymer with absorbents called Chitosan to separate out contaminants. It works as a sponge that binds to specific toxic elements. At the core of...

A global water crisis is expected by 2025 unless economically viable ways of purifying water can be developed. One of the major threats to water supplies is contamination, from saltwater from industrial waste, from pesticides. New sensors would help. Research labs are working on sensors specially designed to deal with monitoring and purification problems. Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have synthesized DNA to detect trace amounts of lead, mercury, arsenic and other contaminants in water. The DNA sensors can be produced in the form of sophisticated testing instruments suitable for metropolitan water districts or in the form of strips -- like a home...

Researchers at Duke University have come to respect the power of nano-engineered buckyballs. In one project, the engineers found that ultrafine mesh coatings made of carbon buckyballs can hinder the ability of bacteria and other microorganisms to colonize the membranes that filter impurities from water. This is one of the major problems - and costs - in treating H2O. The bacteria builds up and attracts other organic matter. In time, a film of biological material accumulates. A reduction in membrane-replacement cost, even of 50 percent, would translate to huge savings. "Biofouling is viewed as one of the biggest costs associated with membrane-based water-treatment systems," said Claudia...

OK. It's New Zealand, not Australia. But this company called EcoInnovation still reminds you a little bit of Road Warrior. Founder and chief engineer Michael Lawley has built his "renewable energy store" on the ingenious redeployment of everyday household appliances. Among other things, the company recycles SmartDrive motors from salvaged washing machines to generate hydropower. Of course, you need to be near a river or stream. Yes, micro-hydro turbines that can tap into the movement of medium flowing streams and turn a turbine that can deliver most of the electrical requirements of a small home. Lawley says the company has been able to recycle the motors from salvaged domestic washing...

Cancer is a terrible disease that changes the life of anyone it touches. One incredible individual diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, John Kanzius, was motivated to develop a new treatment for cancer after having to experience the grueling side effects of chemotherapy. He used the disease as a motivator rather than a reason to give up on life and ended up inventing a device that could change history in the process. As an inventor, Kazius was used to looking for solutions in novel places. He decided that a radio frequency generator (RFG) may work against cancer cells and he used anything available, such as pie plates to build the first prototype, dubbed the Kanzius RF device, in his...

Selenium is a potent environmental contaminant produced by oil refineries and chemical plants. Removing it from industrial wastewater takes time and money. To date, the process has involved a chemical process that employs catalytic reduction to convert selenium to an inert form. Japanese researchers from Osaka University and Shibaura Institute of Technology have now developed a new way to use a strain of bacteria to recover selenium in wastewater. The researchers’ novel approach uses a bioreactor. In the reactor, the conversion of toxic selenium to a nontoxic form takes about 50 hours. Once the recovery process is completed, the resulting waste sludge is burnable...

The trend towards infrastructure decentralization is well understood with respect to energy production. Since humanity's collective energy requirements will double in the next generation - even with extraordinary improvements in energy efficiency - thousands of new utility scale energy developments will compete with, for example, millions of solar arrays deployed on rooftops. Another example of infrastructure decentralization is in the many waste-to-energy technologies under development. These solutions have utility scale applications, but also onsite applications, as reported in our recent post "Onsite Waste-to-Energy." In both of these areas, energy production, and disposal of municipal solid...

While racing towards Los Angeles from Hawaii on his yacht, Charles Moore decided to stray from the typical route and take what he thought would be an easy shortcut through the North Pacific gyre. Expecting to see nothing by calm, shimmering water in one of the most secluded regions of the ocean, Moore was shocked to find himself surrounded by mounds of garbage instead. For almost a week, Moore would walk on deck just to stare at sun-bleached toys, ropes, cups, and eerie shadows of plastic bags floating underneath the waves. The North Pacific Gyre, noted for calm stable waters, and circular undersea currents, is calculated to contain over 100 million tons of trash. After its discovery in...

When it comes to testing for contaminants-whether in your lab, production facility, or even in your own body-nothing is more excruciating than the wait. Current testing methods are painfully slow: It takes about a full week to get results from most labs, and there is nothing you can do but gnaw at your fingernails and plan for the worst. BioVigilant has developed a unique tool that automatically detects a variety of contaminants such as mold, bacteria, dust and smog almost immediately. This is incredible news, since lab testing for the same contaminants is typically time consuming, costly and labor intensive (often requiring the growth of a substance on petri-dishes and identifying contaminants by...