Green Options

Chemical treatment is becoming a less desirable way to provide safe drinking water, and water professionals have been searching for a less expensive, more reliable and more sustainable method of killing pathogens.  Cavitation Technologies, Inc. has come up with one solution.  The company’s new process uses mechanical and electrical systems to blow the little bugs to smithereens.

The company’s CaviGulation reactor sounds like a piece of equipment that would be at home in Frankenstein’s lab.  It delivers up a complex set of reactions based on kinetic energy, chemical, electro-chemical, and hydrodynamic principles.  The result: a water disinfection process that’s 1,000 times more effective than conventional systems.

High-tech membranes are catching on as a lower cost, non-chemical and more sustainable water treatment process, but there’s a catch: they can quickly foul with dirt and other particles.  Enter NanoBrane, a nanotechnology company with a patent-pending breakthrough in membrane properties that prevents fouling.  That makes the treatment process run more efficiently and reduces the downtime needed to service the membranes, potentially reducing operating expenses by up to 20%.

One solution to the world’s water pollution problems could be something you can’t taste, touch, see, smell, or hear.  Especially hear.  Ultrasound, the range of frequencies beyond the limits of human hearing, is starting to emerge as an effective water treatment that is more sustainable than chemical dosing.  Researchers are discovering that ultrasound performs well on algae, and that’s only the beginning.  Ultrasound can remove a variety of pollutants in water, including those that affect the taste of America’s favorite fish, the catfish.

Research from the University of Gothenburg has revealed that 31% of antibiotics sold in Sweden contain drugs manufactured near Hyderabad, India, where porous wastewater treatment has led to widespread contamination.

The questionable water treatment facilities were found to release levels of the antibiotic ciprofloxacin which were 5 times higher than the daily consumption of the entire country of Sweden. At levels that high, there is an increased risk of breeding “super germs”, drug-resistant bacteria which have evolved an immunity to antibiotics.

After reading Simran Sethi and Sarah Smarsh’s post about $40 Bling bottled water (I am still praying that is just a big joke), you may well want to run to your tap and chug down a few glasses of nice, cheap tap water.

But not so fast, my thrifty water-loving friend–if you live in the city or otherwise have access to municipal treated water. While the clear fluid coming out of your faucet is H2O just like the stuff in that naughty $40 plastic bottle, it may have a few things added to the H’s and O’s that could be more costly than any plastic bottle.

Unfortunately, municipal water treatment nowadays means more than just water cleansed of poop, pee, and various other nasty bits of stuff in order to make for a potable potation coming out of your tap. And what municipalities put into the water could be as unhealthy for the planet as they are for you.

Probably the most infamous introduction to municipal water is fluoride. Way back in the 1940s, fluoride found its way into American water systems after scientists discovered that people who ingested fluoride-treated water apparently had less instances of tooth decay. And ever since, fluoride treatment has been standard practice in municipalities worldwide.

Water shortages are on the rise, from Mexico to the Andes, northern China to southern India, and Spain to Pakistan. Drought, soaring populations and population densities, changing diets, and increasing living standards are all factors. Is this an issue that technology can fix?

Judging by investors’ responses, the answer seems to be yes. FourWinds will invest up to $4.7 billion in water treatment and desalinization and companies that make meters, pumps, and pipes.

BlueWater Bio is a player in the wastewater and sludge treatment arena. Their claim to fame is a treatment technology called Hybrid Bacillus Activated Sludge (HYBACS). It uses proprietary bacteria that eats waste, saving on chemicals. The high quality treatment effluent has reuse potential for commercial or industrial applications, but I wouldn’t recommend drinking it.

Monsanto’s top 20 experts have been examining how climate science will affect the company, with drought being the leading problem to solve. New drought-resistant crops are being created.

“The most advanced of these is now a drought-tolerant corn product … commercializable within several years,” said Monsanto’s head of technology strategy and development David Fischhoff . “We expect this to be the first generation of an ongoing stream.”