What new technologies do you think will have the most positive impact in solving our water challenges?
Published on by Kevin Kelly, Kurimexicana - Head of Research and Development
4 Answers
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Kevin, can you assess "how much better" travelling by jet from walking by foot? Definitely not because the first "technology" dramatically changed our life quality. Can any ion exchange calculator run without operating system (OS) like Windows? GBE is a global OS for the process engineering business, all engineering tools may be plugged in GBE easily - take a look at the toolbox of GBE. As regards "extensive quantitative models", very often they are replaced with quick-fix estimation sufficient for real-life projects constrained by time, budget, and resources. But this is another story.
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One does not need to rack his/her brains to understand that the major accelerator of the seawater desalination and water treatment progress will be information technologies already available on the market. Example is http://www.projenex.com. In my opinion such technologies will be a solid basis for substantial decrease in capex (15 – 30%) and opex (5 – 10%) and promote water-scarcity awareness in the world.
1 Comment
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Yes Victor, the extent to which information technologies will help us optimize remains unknown even now, having such a large potential. There is just no way of knowing how much trouble these type of technologies will save us, or how much better they will allow us to do things. I am curious as to whether GBE has been applied to ion exchange or adsorption systems to predict the performance of such systems in terms of particle density, particle diameters and packaging, flow and equilibrium dynamics. Would very much appreciate any feedback in this regard as there is extensive quantitative models behind these processes, however I believe not many are available through software tools.
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Kevin, AWG is emerging technology but I doubt it on practical basis.At the same hand this solid rain, sound interesting but will it lead to water clogging? thank you for sharing this information.
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Hello Ushi, I think you might be referring to waterlogging?, which is the saturation of soil with water. I don't think we can talk about saturation of water since its not really true liquid water that we are dealing with, it is water trapped as a solid phase. The fact that it is trapped as little cubes that are physically separated from one another (this comes from the water absorption capacity of each grain of salt that separates them as they saturate with water) provides space between them where I assume air could pass freely. In this sense it might provide even more room for the plant to breathe. It is a good question, and I don't think this phenomenon of waterlogging has been studied to the extent it should, however I do know the technology is having a large impact in water deficient agricultural communities. You might be right in terms of AWGs not being practical, however I do believe there is large latent potential behind the concept of harvesting water from atmospheric humidity. Just thinking about all the water that evaporates from the oceans into the atmosphere and that we could grant it available without thinking about desalination sounds pretty nifty to me. After all, our planet constantly purifies sea water and in large quantities through evaporation as part of its own natural cycles.
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Kevin according me lot many technologies can help us, like smart water meters for agriculture as well domestic purpose, desalination etc. As you are an expert in this area I will like to know your views on this this. What are new emerging water technologies are? Also for water purification in rural area what can be done on a economic basis?
1 Comment
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Hello Sahana, you are correct, there are many technologies that can help us, among the technologies I consider to be of great importance are those that will help us optimize the way we harvest rainwater, integral systems in housing development including filtering pavement, rainwater harvesting rooftops and biodigesters I believe will play an important role in the near future. The way we harvest water from atmospheric humidity I believe will also play an important role, Atmospheric Water Generators (AWG) can be applied even for drinking purposes. Finally, desalination technologies that are cost-efficient will probably take the prize home, ranging from electron flow, to ion exchange and chemical adsorption. Many available desalination technologies could potentially work on solar power, this will be a major trend in my opinion. Another technology I believe holds high promises are salts that can retain alot of water or "solid rain". I believe Solid Rain will have a great impact on regions that suffer of droughts and low annual precipitation. This technology consists of a salt that can absorb up to 500 times its molecular weight but as water. Once it has "saturated" with water, it swells up into a gelatinous cube that prevents the water from evaporating or lixiviating into the soil, keeping it available for the plant to take water as it needs. Once the plant has dried out the salt, the material goes back to its dust form and can re-absorb water to become once again, a rich water source for the plant. This cycle can repeat over years. It is actually been used for agricultural purposes in deserts. Additionally, internet and software tools that could help us yield valuable data concerning the use and needs of water, will certainly lead us to a more efficient manner of water usage. Regarding water purification in rural areas, I believe Biosorption could be applied for the removal of metals, it is very cheap since it consists of natural ion exchangers that come from many different types of agro-industrial wastes. Large reactor trains of different cheap biosorbents could be set up to remove a wide variety of pollutants and obtain a good water quality from wells. Again, rainwater through cheap harvesting systems could be another option in rural areas as well as Solid Rain, since it could help reduce and divert the use of watering water to other domestic uses. There are also many cheap biomanipulation techniques that can help improve the quality of land water systems, depending on the use of water one requires, this could also be applied in such rural communities.
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