IF YOU KNOW POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY YOU UNDERSTAND PUBLIC POLICY AT THE NATIONAL, STATE, AND LOCAL LEVELS-----
I will end this round of water privatization policy today by looking at what industries global corporate Clinton neo-liberals and Bush neo-cons are claiming as the 21st Century economy and how that relates to what we all know is a coming fresh water crisis.
First, I want to remind everyone---whether Democratic or Republican the goal of political philosophy tied to global corporate tribunal rule---when I say Clinton neo-liberals are the same as Bush neo-cons because they are both merging into Libertarian Marxism----Stalinism. Notice they are trying to move labor unions over to what they claim are socialist, left-leaning Lenninism---when we can clearly see a far-right Libertarian Marxism that will become Stalist. This is what Ivy League Universities---whether neo-liberal Berkeley, Northwestern, Princeton, or Harvard----or neo-conservative---Yale, Stanford, Johns Hopkins. Look how both Clinton/Obama neo-liberals embrace Trans Pacific Trade Pact along with Bush/Cheney neo-cons----and then look at the move to privatize all that is public---including vital fresh water sources. This is not Marxist socialism---it is Marxist Stalinism folks! There is nothing left-leaning about these global corporate tribunal Marxist Stalinist! Trying to sell neo-conservatives as left-leaning with Republicans embracing labor unions being killed by Clinton neo-liberals controlling the people's Democratic Party.
JUST GET RID OF ALL THESE GLOBAL CORPORATE POLITICIANS AND GET BACK TO A DOMESTIC SOCIAL CAPITALIST DEMOCRACY FOLKS!
The Neoconservative Movement is Trotskyism
Posted on January 23, 2013 by Smilardog Veterans Today- by Jonas E. Alexis
Former neoconservative luminary Francis Fukuyama of Stanford (formerly of Johns Hopkins) compares the neoconservative movement to Leninism. Neoconservatism, according to Fukuyama, is the reincarnation to some extent of both Leninism and Bolshevism.
Fukuyama’s observation makes sense when even Irving Kristol, who founded the movement, proudly admitted that the “honor I most prized was the fact that I was a member in good standing of the [Trotskyist] Young People’s Socialist League (Fourth International).”
And this neoconservative movement, as Jewish writer Sidney Blumenthal has shown, found its political and intellectual ideology “in the disputatious heritage of the Talmud.”
Even after the birth of the neoconservative movement, many of its members such as Stephen Schwartz of the Weekly Standard and Joan Wohlstetter of the RAND Corporation still had a burning thirst for Lev Davidovich Bronstein, known as Leon Trotsky.
In that sense, the neoconservative persuasion is a subversive movement which started out in the 1920s and 30s. Legal scholar Michael Lind pointed out some years ago that,
“Most neoconservative defense intellectuals have their roots on the left, not the right. They are products of the influential Jewish-American sector of the Trotskyist movement of the 1930s and 1940s, which morphed into anti-communist liberalism between the 1950s and 1970s and finally into a kind of militaristic and imperial right with no precedents in American culture or political history.”
This was the case for Kristol, who bragged about how his Jewish intellectual comrades such as Nathan Glazer of Harvard, Philip Selznick of Berkley, Peter Rossi of Johns Hopkins, Merroe Berger of Princeton, I. Milton Sacks of Brandeis, and Seymour Melman of Columbia were not only Trotskyists but were “unquestionably the most feverishly articulate” in indoctrinating students into their Weltanschauung.
_____________________________________________
Maryland as is true of all states controlled by Clinton neo-liberals and Bush neo-cons----which sadly today are all US states----are pushing technology as the manufacturing growth because technology corporations control the Democratic Party and because Republicans are great big cyber spying and surveillance autocrats. Yet, as you see here-----technology is the industry most likely to suck the US dry of water-----worse than global BIG AG if that is possible. Now, as they look for ways to use sea water for example----it is the American people that will take the back burner---we will be subjected to the rationing of water----the recycled waste water as drinking water etc as these global industries suck the US dry.
We are using the technology industry as a base for US economy at a time it is producing things that we do not want and need. We do not need a billion different APPS---we do not need tons of BIOTECH products that are simply reformulations of existing PHARMA patents. We don't need all kinds of movement of government documents online and out of the reach of the American people. AND THIS IS WHAT DRIVES THE EVER-EXPANDING TECHNOLOGY CRAZE. We are not LUDDITES for sidelining this technology as US economy.
Think about how the internet is being handed to global corporations with these policies trying to end net neutrality----all of the internet capacity is being channeled to these massive technology businesses. The American people will not be able to afford ordinary internet connections----this is what will happen to fresh water in the US. All of the fresh water will go to these technology manufacturing plants needing the purity of water----while US citizens are pushed to alternative water and/or exposed to what is known to be contaminated and dangerous water.
This is what California's Jerry Brown has been feeding as he pretended to pass a Water Rights bill for the citizens of California. We do not need to allow less than 20% of Clinton neo-liberals control 80% of labor and justice Democratic base!
Semicondutor Manufacturing Plants can use as much water as a small city. As the Industry Grows, Finding New Ways to Recycle and Conserve Water
Posted 31 Aug 2009 | 4:00 GMT This segment is part of the Engineers of the New Millennium: The Global Water Challenge Special Report.
Transcript: Mopping Up the Purest Water
Laurie Howell: You have to prepare yourself for a lot of noise in this engineering research center. Located in a warehouse on the University of Arizona campus, this mini computer-chip manufacturing plant is a test facility. This is where engineers can re-create all the industry's water issues, so they can fix them.
Ting Sun: So, here is a typical 200-millimeter polisher—looks like—at the bottom is the rotating pad.
Laurie Howell: Chemical engineer Dr. Ting Sun gives me a tour of the polishing room, lined with various sizes of flat, round silicon wafers.
Ting Sun: And when we're ready, we're gonna bring the head down and the wafer will touch the pad. All of them are rotating, so they're gonna do the polish work.
Laurie Howell: Polishers spin the silicon wafers against a pad and a chemical mix known as slurry, polishing each layer of circuitry and then rinsing it with ultrapure water.
Ting Sun: By doing that, we can use less chemicals, so we dump less chemical into the environment, so that helps a lot, and also by using less of chemical, we also use less water to rinse it.
Laurie Howell: A true 21st-century chemical engineer, Sun is educated in a practice called design for the environment.
Farhang Shadman: Design for environment basically means that those who are in charge of developing new processes will have the environmental, not only environmental thinking but also the tools and techniques of environmental assessment in their way of doing research.
Laurie Howell: Dr. Farhang Shadman has directed the center since its launch in 1996. Formally called the SRC/Sematech Engineering Research Center for Environmentally Benign Semiconductor Manufacturing, it has grown to include nine universities across the U.S.
Farhang Shadman: Probably the legacy of the center is showing and proving, by many, many examples, that environmental approach to technology not only makes sense, not only it reduces cost, it may be the only way that future manufacturing is done.
Laurie Howell: Computer chipmakers watch this center closely for new technologies, and it's easy to understand why. Many semiconductor manufacturing plants are located in the water-strapped cities of the Southwest.
Farhang Shadman: One manufacturing plant uses anywhere between 2 to 4 million gallons of very, very pure water—we call it ultrapure water—per day, and that, on the average, is roughly equivalent to the water usage of a city of maybe 40 000, 50 000 people.
Laurie Howell: Shadman guides me past a room with engineers dressed head to toe in what they call “clean-room suits,” which protect the research from outside impurities. Just like surgery, semiconductor manufacturing requires a sterile environment.
Farhang Shadman: Okay, what you see here is what we call a pilot plant, a water pilot plant, and it is very unique because it essentially resembles the water purification plants of semiconductor manufacturing, except that everything is in a smaller scale and everything is research development–oriented so we can change things, things that you can not do in the real manufacturing.
Laurie Howell: So, what we're looking at right here are different stations where the water goes through purification process, water softeners, carbon filters…and that's because the water that's needed in the semiconducting industry needs to be so pure, purer than any water, anywhere.
Farhang Shadman: Yes, because the wafer that is being cleaned is already very clean. You're trying to remove very, very small traces of impurity. So, if water has any contaminants in it…it will be harmful. Very interesting point is about bacteria: We cannot tolerate any bacteria—live or dead, it doesn't matter—because of the fact that the bacteria typically have some of the trace elements in them like phosphorus, like carbon. These traces of these compounds will change the electrical properties of the silicon wafer.
Laurie Howell: And that could lead to defective computer chips and, ultimately, product recalls. So, chemical engineer Dr. Jun Yan has been developing a new water sensor that detects immediately when a silicon wafer is clean, so rinsing can stop, saving millions of gallons of water a day.
Jun Yan: Environmental concern, environmental issue, and how mankind, civilization can survive depend on what can we do and how can we approach it, so I think it's very exciting, very important, meaningful work.
Laurie Howell: Idealistic? Maybe, and maybe a whole lot more. The water sensor developed by Yan and his colleagues is already on the market and was named 2009 Product of the Year by SEMI, a global association for microelectronics and other industries.
Farhang Shadman: We want to make sure that manufacturing, and particularly high-technology manufacturing, is maintained and retained, kept in the United States, and if you do not solve some of these environmental issues and some of these resource issues, we stand the risk of losing that manufacturing to other areas.
Laurie Howell: The center has now spun off five start-up companies. And its environmental technologies are being applied outside semiconductor manufacturing and electronics, in the medical and pharmaceutical industries, among others. For Spectrum Radio, I'm Laurie Howell.
______________________________________________
I love almonds and I would want almond farming in Maryland IF IT WAS A DOMESTIC INDUSTRY. As we know, global corporate pols work exclusively to expand markets overseas so all food grown or harvested-----from Chesapeake Bay seafood, to poultry, to groves of grapes or almonds will be sold overseas and that is not sustainable. IF YOUR POLS ARE SHOUTING THEY ARE BEING SUSTAINABLE WHILE GROWING GLOBAL MARKETS---THEY ARE LYING! You cannot get Pecans in the US because they are being shipped overseas for lots of money. Yet they are using all of our water to grow them......STOP THIS CRAZINESS!
When Prince George's black Chamber of Commerce as with Baltimore's joins in with all this Clinton neo-liberalism that is global markets and global corporations and Trans Pacific Trade Pact as good for global corporations----they are the face of advancing all of this fresh water shortage policy. Black citizens make up a third of voting in Maryland----Montgomery County----land of lying, cheating, and stealing your way to wealth global corporate Clinton neo-liberalism is expanding into Prince George's County to capture that black vote----while the most neo-conservative in the world Johns Hopkins captures the Baltimore City black vote to make Maryland the most raging global corporate tribunal state it is. I speak with middle-class Montgomery County citizens supposedly progressive or Democratic and they are right there pushing Clinton neo-liberals as are all Maryland labor and justice organizations. Rural Maryland being Republican is home of the BIG AG global markets that drained 2 of Maryland's 3 aquifers dry. Global market BIG AG neo-conservatives in rural Maryland are right there in the Maryland Assembly working with Clinton neo-liberals embracing all of this global corporate capture of Maryland's economy and this is what causes the wealth inequity, the fraud and corruption, and it is why Maryland is ground zero for installing TPP, global corporate tribunal rule, and Marxist Stalinism.
YOU HAD BETTER BELIEVE THAT FRESH WATER POLICY IN THE US IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SOCIAL CAPITALIST DEMOCRATS----AND MARXIST STALINIST NEO-LIBERALS AND NEO-CONS.
Keep in mind that California was taken to neo-liberalism by Reagan and then super-sized this when Clinton took the Democratic Party to neo-liberalism. This is when BIG AG and shipping food grown in the US globally to maximize profit soared as did the sucking of US aquifers.
JUST STOPPING GLOBAL BIG AG PROTECTS OUR WATER. CLINTON NEO-LIBERALS ARE EXPANDING THIS TODAY----
The citizen’s guide to the future
.May 14 2014 3:27 PM FROM SLATE, NEW AMERICA, AND ASU
The Thirsty West: 10 Percent of California’s Water Goes to Almond Farming
That’s nuts. By Eric Holthaus
This almond orchard is being grown in a desert.Courtesy of Eric Holthaus
DENAIR, Calif.—In California’s vast Central Valley, agriculture is king. But the king appears fatally ill, and no worthy replacement is in sight, as the area noticeably reverts into the desert it was little more than a century ago.
Signs line the back roads here that run parallel to wide irrigation ditches:
“Pray for rain”
“No water = No jobs”
As I’ve already discussed in the Thirsty West series, city-dwelling Californians are a bit insulated from near-term water shortages thanks to the state’s intricate tentacles of aqueducts, pipelines, and canals that divert water from the snowcapped Sierras to the urban core along the coast. Rapid population growth looms ominously, but for now, you’ll still be able to brush your teeth in Oakland and Burbank.
By all accounts the current water crisis is far more urgent in the sprawling fields of the Central Valley. And that’s bad news for those of us who enjoy eating daily. Two simple facts explain why: California is the most productive agricultural state in the union, and agriculture uses 80 percent of California’s water. In a year with practically none of the stuff, that’s enough to send ripple effects throughout the country.
California is the nation’s leading producer of almonds, avocados, broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, grapes, lettuce, milk, onions, peppers, spinach, tomatoes, walnuts, and dozens of other commodities, according to a 2012 Department of Agriculture report (PDF). The state produces one-third of our vegetables and two-thirds of our nuts and fruits each year. While fields in iconic agricultural states like Iowa, Kansas, and Texas primarily produce grain (most of which is used to fatten animals), pretty much everything you think of as actual food is grown in California. Simply put: We can’t eat without California. But as climate change–fueled droughts continue to desiccate California, the short-term solution from farmers has been to double down on making money.
Like many Americans, I’d never visited California’s ultra-productive Central Valley before my monthlong drought-themed road trip for Slate. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect besides lots and lots of fields. Having grown up in a small town in Kansas and living now in the heart of Wisconsin’s dairy country, I’m plenty familiar with agriculture, but I’ve never seen anything remotely resembling the scale on which it’s practiced here. Agriculture here isn’t the endless fields of corn and wheat of my childhood. Thanks to California’s unique climate, fields here are comprised almost entirely of high-value cash crops.
Driving northward along California state Route 99 from Bakersfield to Fresno, we passed mile after mile of almond orchards, vineyards, and warehouses. There were enormous piles of hay on dairies the size of small towns. Citrus plantations extended to the horizon. And between them all was a crisscrossing network of irrigation ditches, most of which were dry. Coincidentally, this rural highway also bisects the heart of California’s current mega-drought, in which three-quarters of the state is currently rated “extreme” or “exceptional” by the USDA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It’s pretty easy to see why this place is the epicenter of Western water issues. I ended up spending more time here than in any other stop on the trip.
Farmers in California are forced to irrigate because of a fundamental seasonal mismatch: The vast majority of the rain and snow comes in the winter and the best growing conditions (sunlight, warmth) of California’s temperate Mediterranean climate are in the summer.
This year, farmers have to make important decisions—and it often comes down to money. If given a choice between keeping fruit trees alive (which take years to mature and can bring 10 times more money per acre), or planting rows of vegetables that live only a few months, that’s a no-brainer if you’re trying to maximize profit. This year, farmers are fallowing vegetable fields and scrambling to save high-dollar fruit and nut orchards. The result is counterintuitive: In the midst of the worst drought in half a millennium, the most water-intensive crops are getting priority.
California almonds use a stunning 1.1 trillion gallons of water each year, or enough for you to take a 10-minute shower each day for 86 million years (using a low-flow showerhead, of course). Here’s the calculation: California as a whole diverts or pumps 43 million acre-feet of water each year to supplement its meager rainfall. In total, agriculture consumes 34 million acre-feet of that. (An acre-foot is just what it sounds like: the amount of water needed to cover an acre of flat ground up to a foot, or about 325,000 gallons of water.) In 2013, there were 940,000 acres of almonds in California, according to the USDA (PDF). Each acre of almonds uses three to four acre-feet of water each year, most of which are delivered via river diversions or groundwater.
Almonds are one of California's most water-intensive crops, but during this year's epic drought farmers are planting even more. The reason? Economics.Courtesy of Eric Holthaus
Almonds alone use about 10 percent of California’s total water supply each year. That’s nuts. But almonds are also the state’s most lucrative exported agricultural product, with California producing 80 percent of the world’s supply. Alfalfa hay requires even more water, about 15 percent of the state’s supply. About 70 percent of alfalfa grown in California is used in dairies, and a good portion of the rest is exported to land-poor Asian countries like Japan. Yep, that’s right: In the middle of a drought, farmers are shipping fresh hay across the Pacific Ocean. The water that’s locked up in exported hay amounts to about 100 billion gallons per year—enough to supply 1 million families with drinking water for a year.
Though economics drive the seemingly improbable logic of California’s water exporting, that’s no reason to rush to boycott almonds. As this viral infographic from Mother Jones shows, it takes more than a gallon of water to grow a single almond, and it may take 220 gallons of water to produce a large avocado. But pound-for-pound, there’s an order of magnitude more water needed to get meat and dairy to your plate. A stick of butter requires more than 500 gallons of water to make. A pound of beef takes up to 5,000 gallons. More than 30 percent of California’s agricultural water use either directly or indirectly supports growing animals for food. (As Slate’s L.V. Anderson recently wrote, one of the single most effective actions to combat climate change would be if everyone in the world went vegetarian overnight. It would also likely wreck our economy.)
Later this year, as the effects of California’s drought reverberate through America’s supermarkets, they’ll be what amounts to a de facto water tax: The biggest price increases will be found with some of the most water-intensive crops.
Farmers here are turning to groundwater to make up the difference—and that’s where things get worse. The shocking truth is, California is the last state that doesn’t regulate groundwater pumping, even as supplies are dwindling. That means the motto around here right now is, to borrow another Mother Jones headline: “Drill baby drill (for water, that is).” In some overpumped places, the ground has already sunk by dozens of feet. There are indications that the debate could be changing. In April, a series of conservation bills were presented in the state Senate, with the intention of using the current crisis to address the issue of slipping groundwater supply.
The stakes are so high and the backlog for new water wells is so long that some farmers are buying their own million-dollar drilling rigs, just to protect their massive investments. Wildcatting drilling crews are working 24 hours a day to keep up with demand.
California will never solve its water crisis if the aquifer keeps getting more and more holes to extract groundwater. But in dry years like this one, the state’s agriculture would almost cease to be without groundwater. One short-term answer is more efficient methods, like drip irrigation. The problem is, irrigation technology has gotten so good that typically the end result is increased yields. And the more efficient the irrigation, the less water gets into the soil for groundwater recharge.
While agriculture isn’t a monolith, you’d think an industry dependent on water would be fighting for its survival by addressing the core of the problem. Yet some subsets of the industry seem to refuse to accept the new reality.
_______________________________________________
Do we really need a tee shirt for every day or occasion or jeans as the only thing we wear? These are the kinds of changes any REAL progressive would be shouting -----yet these industries control our pols and that is sucking all of our fresh water. So, as we rebuild American manufacturing we would not want these kinds of factories and certainly not global corporations coming back to America to produce for the world!
A REAL progressive labor and justice liberal would be shouting against technology expansion as the 21st Century economy-----that is how you know a Clinton neo-liberal posing as progressive. They cannot push technology as the new US economy and pretend to be environmentalists----THIS IS HOW I KNOW THEY ARE LYING!
The REAL progressive labor and justice Democrats will be those pushing global corporations away from controlling local and state economies----they will be the ones that see technology is being used
FOR THE WRONG REASONS BY CLINTON NEO-LIBERALS AND BUSH NEO-CONS AS THEY BECOME MORE AND MORE AUTOCRATIC AND REPRESSIVE.
Just how many 'innovations' can be made and still look like it is water-friendly?
It Takes 2700 Liters of Water to Make a T-Shirt
by 3p Contributor on Wednesday, Feb 6th, 2013
by Julie Malone
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and National Geographic provides a new video, “Make Each Choice Count,” based on water usage in textile production. The growth, manufacturing, transporting, and washing of cotton uses huge amounts of water.
For example, it takes about 2,700 liters of water to make just one t-shirt , which is enough water for one person to drink for 900 days. And, let’s not forget the wear and tear on the t-shirt once purchased. One load of washing uses 40 gallons of water and five times more energy to dry it. How often do you wash that t-shirt: once a week or month? Fortunately, there are ways to help the problem, skip the drying and ironing process and hang your t-shirt to air dry. You might save 1/3 of your t-shirt’s carbon footprint. The choices we make today affect the future needs of others.
Our society believes there is plenty of consumable water to go around for everyone. Not really. Our planet’s water is 97 percent salty and two percent snow and ice, which leaves less than one percent that we can access. However, 70 percent of that one percent is used to grow crops. Cotton is a very thirsty crop. Can you imagine how many t-shirts are in our city, towns, state, country, globally, and on this planet?
Waterfootprint.org, a learning platform for connecting diverse communities interested in sustainability, equitability and efficiency of water use, mentions that cotton farming is the largest consumer of water in the apparel supply chain, and is used in 40 percent of all clothing worldwide.
Fortunately, there is good news from the industry. Companies are making great strides in reducing their water footprint for cotton. Major textile brands are looking towards more eco-friendly cotton production. WWF works with farmers and the businesses that buy their crops to develop sustainable farming methods. This takes the strain off water supplies, not just for cotton, but for other “thirsty crops” like sugar cane and rice.
Farmers in Pakistan and India, as well as CEOs in the United States and South Africa, are being helped by the WWF to assist people to use water more responsibly. With WWF’s support, the Better Cotton Initiative is working with farmers to grow cotton with less water. The Better Cotton Initiative is an intense cooperation consisting of a multi-stakeholder group of organizations that work together to find better, more sustainable way of growing cotton to introduce to the public.
In Pakistan, the Initiative has worked with 75,000 farmers who, as a result, have reduced their water use by 39 percent and increased their income by 11 percent. They also used 47 percent less pesticide and 39 percent less chemical fertilizer. By using less pesticides and chemical fertilizer in the United States, the rivers are less likely to transport pollutants to The Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico, a large region of water that is very low in oxygen, and therefore can’t support life. That’s good for companies, good for other communities downstream, good for the fish, birds and other creatures that depend on rivers and wetlands, and good for people like you who care about where your t-shirts come from. The textile industry can bring a better product to the customer, however, it is up to the customer to play their part in water efficiency also.
The Dead Zone’s website shows an animation of how the above chemicals, and water from farms, rivers, streams, feed lots, and city streets from 40 percent of the U.S. runs down the Mississippi, Ohio, Arkansas, Red, and Missouri Rivers, where the water all collects in the Mississippi River and down to the mouth of the Gulf of Mexico. The result: bottom-dwellers such as snails, worms, starfish, and crabs can’t escape the dead zone’s oxygen poor water – so they die. Fish and shrimp swim out of the area, which could cause shrimp supply to drop and seafood prices to rise.
Julie Malone, based in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, is an environmental researcher. She is graduate student at the University of Denver and has a M.A.S. degree in Environmental Policy and Management and is working on her M.S. in Legal Administration. Her academic work can be found on knowourplanet.com.
__________________________________________
Now, we know desalination will be where global corporate pols go to satisfy global corporations. As we see here-----if your pols are pretending to be energy efficient and green while growing these alternatives to fresh water---
THEY ARE LYING. THE SOLUTION IS NOT TO ALLOW GLOBAL CORPORATIONS TO USE AND ABUSE OUR FRESH WATER.
So, a pol that shouts I am green that allows fracking to go wild----who promotes natural gas as a green energy source---IS LYING AND IS A CLINTON NEO-LIBERAL---GET RID OF THEM!
Below is a long article----please glance through and think----we are putting so much time into academic research tied to corporate products that kill our futures instead of academic research that tells us we are going in the wrong direction----this is what corporate universities vs academic universities working in the public interest is about. These desalination methods are already known to put extreme pressure on an already stressed ocean water balance-----WE KNOW THAT. Because we have allowed Clinton neo-liberals and Bush neo-cons to corporatize and make product mills of our universities----all of the research moves these bad economic policies along.
It will be the American people pushed to these desalination water products just as in third world nations where US corporations overseas have devastated those fresh water sources.
All of these technologies are funded by our Federal, state, and local tax revenue under the shout of JOBS, JOBS, JOBS. Who is supporting all of this research pretending to be GREEN? National labor and justice organization leaders shouting GREEN JOBS FOR UNDERSERVED COMMUNITIES which are the ones being killed with lost water rights.
Science, Tech & Environment
Desalination is an expensive energy hog, but improvements are on the way
Ensia
May 15, 2015 · 9:00 AM EDT
It seems simple enough: Take the salt out of water so it’s drinkable.
But it’s far more complex than it appears at first glance. It’s also increasingly crucial in a world where freshwater resources are progressively strained by population growth, development, droughts, climate change and more. That’s why researchers and companies from the United States to Australia are fine-tuning a centuries-old concept that might be the future of quenching the world’s thirst.
“When it comes to increasing water supplies, you have four options: Increase your amount of reuse, increase storage, conserve it or turn to a new source,” says Tom Pankratz, a desalination consultant and current editor of the weekly trade publication "Water Desalination Report." “And for many places around the world, the only new source is desalination.”
Costly Process
Desalination technology has been around for centuries. In the Middle East, people have long evaporated brackish
groundwater or seawater, then condensed the vapor to produce salt-free water for drinking or, in some cases, for agricultural irrigation.
Over time the process has become more sophisticated. Most modern desalination facilities use reverse osmosis, in which water is pumped at high pressure through semipermeable membranes that remove salt and other minerals.
Worldwide about 300 million people get some freshwater from more than 17,000 desalination plants in 150 countries. Middle East countries have dominated that market out of necessity and energy availability, but with threats of freshwater shortages spreading around the world, others are rapidly joining their ranks. Industry capacity is growing about 8 percent per year, according to Randy Truby, comptroller and past president of the International Desalination Association, an industry group, with “bursts of activity” in places such as Australia and Singapore.
In the United States, a $1 billion plant is being built in Carlsbad, California, to provide about seven percent of the drinking water needs for the San Diego region. When it goes online in late 2015 it will be the biggest in North America, with a 50-million-gallon-per-day capacity. And California currently has about 16 desalination plant proposals in the works.
But desalination is expensive. A thousand gallons of freshwater from a desalination plant costs the average US consumer $2.50 to $5, Pankratz says, compared to $2 for conventional freshwater.
It’s also an energy hog: Desalination plants around the world consume more than 200 million kilowatt-hours each day, with energy costs an estimated 55 percent of plants’ total operation and maintenance costs. It takes most reverse osmosis plants about three to 10 kilowatt-hours of energy to produce one cubic meter of freshwater from
seawater. Traditional drinking water treatment plants typically use well under 1 kWh per cubic meter.
And it can cause environmental problems, from displacing ocean-dwelling creatures to adversely altering the salt concentrations around them.
Research into a suite of seawater desalination improvements is underway to make the process cheaper and more environmentally friendly — including reducing dependence on fossil fuel–derived energy, which perpetuates the vicious cycle by contributing to climate change that contributes to freshwater shortages in the first place.
Membrane Upgrade
Most experts say that reverse osmosis is as efficient as it’s going to get. But some researchers are trying to squeeze more by improving the membranes used to separate salt from water.
Membranes currently used for desalination are mainly thin polyamide films rolled into a hollow tube through which the water wicks. One way to save energy is to increase the diameter of the membranes, which is directly correlated with how much freshwater they can make. Companies are increasingly moving from eight-inch to 16-inch diameter membranes, which have four times the active area.
“You can produce more water while reducing the footprint for the equipment,” says Harold Fravel Jr., executive director of the American Membrane Technology Association, an organization that advances the use of water purification systems.
A lot of membrane research is focused on nanomaterials — materials about 100,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair. MIT researchers reported in 2012 that a membrane made of a one-atom-thick sheet of
carbon atoms called graphene could work just as well and requires less pressure to pump water through than polyamide, which is about a thousand times thicker. Less pressure means less energy to operate the system, and, therefore, lower energy bills.
Graphene is not only durable and incredibly thin, but, unlike polyamide, it’s not sensitive to water treatment compounds such as chlorine. In 2013, Lockheed Martin patented the Perforene membrane, which is one atom thick with holes small enough to trap salt and other minerals but that allow water to pass.
Another popular nanomaterial solution is carbon nanotubes, says Philip Davies, an Aston University researcher who specializes in energy efficient systems for water treatment. Carbon nanotubes are attractive for the same reasons as graphene — strong, durable material packed in a tiny package — and can absorb more than 400 percent of their weight in salt.
Membranes have to be swapped out, so carbon nanotubes’ durability and high absorption rate could reduce replacement frequency, saving time and money.
Membrane technology all “sounds sexy, but it’s not easy,” Pankratz says. “There are engineering challenges when making something so thin that still maintains integrity.”
Graphene and carbon nanotubes are decades away from widespread use, says Wendell Ela, a University of Arizona chemical and environmental engineering professor. “I do see them having an impact, but it’s a ways out.”
Truby said barriers to commercialization include engineering such small materials and making new membranes compatible with current plants and infrastructure.
“It’ll be key to upgrade systems without tearing [them] down and building a whole new plant,” he says.
Forward Osmosis
Others are looking beyond reverse osmosis to another process known as forward osmosis. In forward osmosis, seawater is drawn into the system by a solution that has salts and gases, which creates a high osmotic pressure difference between the solutions. The solutions pass through a membrane together, leaving the salts behind.
Ela says forward osmosis will “probably be most efficient as a pretreatment and not as a stand-alone treatment at commercial seawater plants” because reverse osmosis performs better at large scale. As a pretreatment, forward osmosis can lengthen reverse osmosis membranes’ lifespan and promote overall system health by reducing the needed disinfectants and other pretreatment options.
The process should use less energy than reverse osmosis, Ela says, since it’s driven by thermodynamics. But last summer MIT scientists reported that forward osmosis for desalination might prove more energy intensive than reverse osmosis due to the high salt concentration in the solution resulting from the first step.
British company Modern Water operates the first commercial forward osmosis plant in Oman, in the Arabian Peninsula’s southeastern coast. At 26,000 gallons per day, the system has a much smaller capacity than most large-scale reverse osmosis systems. Company officials did not return requests for comments on the plant. However a company report noted that the plant had a 42 percent reduction in energy compared to reverse osmosis.
Heather Cooley, water program director with the Pacific Institute, a California-based sustainability research organization, says most forward osmosis technology is still in the research and development phase, and that commercial use is five to 10 years out.
Dilution Solution
Another approach to reducing the energy cost of desalination is RO-PRO, or reverse osmosis pressure retarded osmosis. RO-PRO works by passing an impaired freshwater source, such as wastewater, through a membrane into the highly saline solution leftover from reverse osmosis, which would normally be discharged to the ocean. The mixing of the two produces pressure and energy that is used to power a reverse osmosis pump.
Inspired by a system used by Statkraft, a Norway-based hydropower and renewable energy company, University of Southern California environmental engineering professor Amy Childress and colleagues are now piloting RO-PRO in California. Childress says “optimistic” estimates show RO-PRO can reduce the energy needed for reverse osmosis 30 percent. She notes that some unspecified companies have shown interest in their pilot.
Recapturing and Renewable Energy
Fravel says many plants are trying to recapture energy from within the process. Turbochargers, for example, take kinetic energy from the outgoing stream of concentrated saltwater and reapply it to the side of incoming seawater. “You might have 900 [pounds per square inch] on the feed side and the concentrate might be coming out at 700 psi. That’s a lot of energy in the concentrate stream,” he says.
Incorporating renewables into the energy input side of things is a particularly promising approach to enhancing desalination’s sustainability.Pretreating water before it goes to membranes can also save energy. “The better you can clean water before it goes into reverse osmosis, the better it runs,” Fravel says. Plants in Bahrain, Japan, Saudi Arabia and China are using pretreatment for a smoother reverse osmosis process.
Incorporating renewables into the energy input side of things is a particularly promising approach to enhancing desalination’s sustainability. Currently an estimated 1 percent of desalinated water comes from energy from renewable sources, mainly in small-scale facilities. But larger plants are starting to add renewables to their energy portfolio.After years of struggling with drought, Australia brought six desalination plants online from 2006 to 2012, investing more than $10 billion. The plants all use some renewables for power, mostly through nearby wind farms that put energy into the grid, Pankratz says. And the Sydney Water desalination plant, which supplies about 15 percent of water to Australia’s most populous city, is powered by offsets from the 67-turbine Capital Wind Farm about 170 miles to the south.
Solar energy is attractive for many heavy desalination countries — particularly those in the Middle East and the Caribbean where sun is plentiful. In one of the more ambitious projects, the United Arab Emirates energy company Masdar announced in 2013 it’s working on the world’s largest solar powered desalination plant, capable of producing more than 22 million gallons per day, with a planned launch in 2020.
Environmental impacts
Plans to use seawater, of course, must consider the implications for sea life. A lot of desalination facilities use open ocean intakes; these are often screened, but the desalination process can still kill organisms during intake or inside the plant’s treatment phases, Cooley says. New subsurface intakes, which go beneath the sand to use it as a natural filter, could help alleviate this concern.
Also, there’s the problem of how to get rid of a lot of very briny water after desalination. Every two gallons a facility takes in means one gallon of drinkable water and one gallon of water that is about twice as salty as when it came in. Most plants discharge this back into the same body of water that serves as the intake source.
Ela says smaller plants, such as the forward osmosis plant in Oman, could be the future of desalination technology.The RO-PRO technology offers one way to reduce the salt concentration in the discharge, which can harm bottom-dwelling creatures. Another method gaining popularity is the use of diffusers, a series of nozzles that increase the volume of seawater mixing with the concentrate discharge preventing spots of high salt.
In one of the more novel recent studies addressing ocean discharge, Davies of Aston University heated up briny discharge with solar energy to convert magnesium chloride into magnesium oxide, which he calls “a good agent to absorb carbon dioxide.” The research is still is the nascent stages, but could have the dual environmental
benefit of reducing discharge and removing CO2 from the ocean using solar power to zap the concentrate.
Size Wise
Ela says smaller plants, such as the forward osmosis plant in Oman, could be the future of desalination technology. A lot of the newer innovations could make economic sense on a smaller scale, and companies wouldn’t have to invest so much in infrastructure, he says.
“Instead of large plants, we might get down to 10,000 gallons per day desalination plants,” Ela says. “I see decentralization and small desalination plants serving small communities.”
This also would provide environmental benefits such as allowing renewable energy to play a larger role, since it’s much easier to power small plants with solar and wind than large ones, he says.
Pankratz says desalination will always be more expensive than treating freshwater. Still, innovations will help desalination become an increasingly workable option as the demand for freshwater grows in an increasingly thirsty world.
_____________________________________________
While Wall Street and global corporate pols are capturing all of the world's fresh water to sell to the rich of the world at high prices-----this is what will be sent to the American people. We will get all of these sources touted as being safe----while global corporations provide the data saying it is so. We know already Penn State University was caught giving data that fracking was not hurting drinking water that was not true----we know Johns Hopkins has been caught time and again providing data that protects corporations over people.
WE KNOW IF CORPORATIONS CONTROL OUR GOVERNMENT THAT WE WILL BE SUBJECTED TO THE WORST OF WATER CONDITIONS. LET'S STOP IT NOW BY GETTING RID OF CLINTON NEO-LIBERALS IN ALL DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY ELECTIONS. BE THE CANDIDATE THAT RUNS AGAINST A CLINTON NEO-LIBERAL AND BUSH NEO-CON.
Global corporations are already selling bottled recycled waste water around the world----guess where those bottled water are being sold?
The point continues to be-----WE KNOW WE ARE HEADING TOWARDS FRESH WATER SHORTAGE SO WHY ARE WE EXPANDING INDUSTRIES THAT SUCK OUR WATER SUPPLY DRY AND CONTAMINATE IT?????!!!!!
From toilet to tap: Getting a taste for drinking recycled waste water
By Kieron Monks, for CNN
Updated 10:46 AM ET, Thu May 1, 2014
But business is booming in California's Orange County Water District (OCWD), through a pioneering wastewater treatment facility that recycles used water -- or sewage -- and returns it to the drinking supply. The plant is expanding production from 70 to 100 million gallons per day, enough for 850,000 people, around one-third of the county population. As the OWCD output is mixed with the main groundwater supply it reaches over 70% of residents.
Global problem
Sewer water recycled to tap water? 01:50PLAY VIDEOThe facility is among the oldest and largest of its type in the world, and could represent a model solution for a global problem. The U.N. warns that half the world population will face water scarcity by 2030, accelerated by climate change and population growth. Shortages on such a scale would threaten food production, as well as a health crisis through increased exposure to unsanitary water, which already kills millions each year through waterborne diseases such as cholera and diarrhea.
But the introduction of reuse systems has been difficult, with a high degree of public skepticism. Orange County began recycling water for non-potable use in the 1970s, but only began contributing to the drinking supply in 2008, combined with a comprehensive PR and education campaign to allay public fears.
Operators now feel the system is well established and ready to scale up. "It's a watershed moment right now, we're seeing widespread acceptance of these technologies," OCWD General Manager Mike Markus said. "As the shortages become more extreme and water supplies are cut, it has raised awareness that we need to find alternative resources."
The process works by re-routing a proportion of the 1.3 billion gallons of waste water generated in Southern California each day into a three-step treatment. The first is microfiltration of the treated waste water to remove solids, oils and bacteria, before the resulting liquid goes through reverse osmosis, pushing it through a fine plastic membrane that filters out viruses and pharmaceuticals. The water is then treated with UV light to remove any remaining organic compounds, before joining the main groundwater supply, which must pass strict quality controls to meet legal standards, and distribution to households.
The OCWD says the water exceeds all state and federal drinking water standards. Safety has also been established in pioneering projects around the world. Water-insecure Singapore, previously reliant on imports, now delivers 30% of its needs through the NEWater reclamation facility. Although only a small amount is added to its reservoirs, the output surpasses WHO standards for potable use to the extent that a high proportion is directed for industrial uses requiring ultra-clean water.
One of the world's earliest schemes, in Windhoek, Namibia, has been in operation since 1968 and has tackled both shortage and water-borne diseases. Over half of the Sub Saharan African population faces water insecurity, and the greatest health risk, diarrhea, kills over a million people each year in the region. But research showed that in the 1970s disease occurred at lower rates for people supplied by the Windhoek plant than through conventional treated sources.
"Standards are stricter because of the novelty of the technology and process," says Benedito Braga, President of the World Water Council. "The quality from sewage is very good, as good or better than the tap water in any city in the developed world."
The message is now being heeded and the model is spreading. California has put $1 billion into funding recycling for potable use ($800 million of that in low-interest loans), with new initiatives launched in Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego.
Texas, parts of which are also severely affected by drought, aims to generate 10% of all new supplies through reclaimed water by 2060. A facility in Big Spring has introduced the first "Direct Potable Reuse" scheme in the United States by sending recycled water to the final treatment plant without passing it through groundwater reserves.
Dealing with disgust
In each case, public relations are key, as recycled water schemes have been historically shot down by public disgust at the concept. This was most vividly shown in the Australian city of Toowoomba in 2006 when local activists represented by the group "Citizens against drinking sewage" defeated plans to introduce reclaimed sources, citing health risks and emotive factors.
Clean water solutions for Haiti 05:33PLAY VIDEOBut Australia also shows the extent to which attitudes have changed. After a three-year public trial, the city of Perth will receive up to 20% of its drinking water from reclaimed sources in coming decades, with a reported 76% public support. A network of similar programs is being established across the country, according to the Australian Water Recycling Center of Excellence.
Psychologists say the aversion is deeply held and difficult -- but not impossible -- to overcome. "The disgust comes from intuitive concepts of contagion," says Dr. Carol Nemeroff of the University of South Maine, who has studied reactions to reclaimed water. "It is magical in nature, the same type of thinking that underlines voodoo practices."
"One of the best ways to get past it is perceptual cues -- if you can see sparkling fresh, clear water, and taste it that helps to overcome the concept ... the contagion type thinking decreases with familiarity," says Nemeroff, adding that necessity can also be a key driver. "If you're desperate you'll override anything for survival."
Energy and cost
In Orange County and other facilities, mixing the output with groundwater is a largely unnecessary, confidence-building measure to allay public fears. But as awareness improves, operators hope to move from indirect to direct potable reuse, which would bring down energy use and costs, while avoiding the counter-intuitive step of re-contaminating purified water.
"The main cost is energy and that is coming down all the time," says Mike Markus. "Improvements in membrane technology allow us to use less pressure to do the same thing." The energy cost of reverse osmosis has come down by 75% since the 1970s, he says, while emerging technologies such as Aquaporin may reduce it further. Even now, the cost is favorable compared with desalination or imported water in California.
Markus hopes such advances will allow for the creation of portable modular units that can be cheaply transported to the areas of the world with the greatest need.
Campaign group Water Reuse does much of its work in education outreach, through messages such as the "Downstream" concept, that all water is ultimately recycled. "It's the same water now as when dinosaurs walked the earth," says executive director Melissa Meeker. "It's about understanding the water cycle and how we fit into it. Once people think about it, they become more open-minded."
If costs continue to fall and public acceptance continues to grow, waste water can become a major defense against the projected scarcities of this century. The World Water Council projects that recycled sewage will be a normalized source of drinking water in cities around the world within 30 years, and much of the infrastructure and technology is already in place. It's up to us now to get used to it.
______________________________________________
As the US works to build its factory and manufacturing jobs we all want to see-----it matters first that they are local, small businesses and not global manufacturing corporations that will mass produce to send overseas. WE WANT TO REBUILD OUR MANUFACTURING WITH SMALL AND LOCAL FACTORIES FOLKS---DO NOT ALLOW GLOBAL CORPORATIONS TO COME BACK AS TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT SEEKS TO DO. Second, we need to rebuild our factory base with products that are not water-intensive as we A...LL KNOW THE US IS COMING TO A FRESH WATER SHORTFALL. Technology is one of the most water-intensive industries and yet, technology is what global corporate pols intend to make central in our manufacturing as it is in our economy. IF YOU KEEP ELECTING CLINTON NEO-LIBERALS ALL ECONOMIC AND INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT WILL BE DRIVEN BY WALL STREET AND GLOBAL CORPORATIONS. If you elect REAL progressive labor and justice social liberals they will look at what fits best for your local economy and you as workers. See the difference?
water Program
The Hidden Water in Everyday Products
Grace Communications
Although we don’t see it, millions of gallons of water go into the products we buy, use and throw away. The factories that manufacture everyday materials like paper, plastic, metal and fabric depend on water to make and clean their products. Becoming aware of how we use and reuse products is an important step towards water conservation.
Water is used in the production of many materials and finished products we personally use everyday. Take cars, for example. It takes 75,000 gallons of water to produce one ton of steel. Since the average car contains about 2,150 pounds of steel, that means over 80,000 gallons of water is needed to produce the finished steel for one car. The gasoline that fuels a car also requires water consumption: approximately 1 to 2.5 gallons of water is used in the process of refining a gallon of gasoline.
It takes 24 gallons of water to make 1 pound of another everyday material: plastic. In fact, it takes at least twice as much water to produce a plastic water bottle as the amount of water in the water bottle. And the water footprint of 1 pound of cotton is 1,320 gallons. That’s more than 700 gallons of water for one new cotton shirt.
American industrial facilities withdraw over 18.2 billion gallons of fresh water per day. But due to increasingly efficient manufacturing practices, these factories have actually reduced water use by 30 percent since 1985. While many factories are making an effort to reduce their use and save water, American consumers aren’t always doing their part. In 2008, for example, we threw out 34.48 million tons of paper and 27.93 million tons of plastic — both of which are water-intensive materials that could be re-used and/or recycled. Every piece of paper and plastic container we toss in the trash is just water down the drain.
Cutting back on consumption of manufactured goods reduces the number of products that are made, in turn reducing the amount of water used in factories. Additionally, recycling the products we've already used can have a positive effect. For example, you can save about 3.5 gallons of water just by recycling a pound a paper – the same amount found in a typical daily newspaper. By doing little things like recycling at home, reusing items when we can and using fewer plastic bags and paper towels, we can each make a big difference. Every drop counts!
I will end this round of water privatization policy today by looking at what industries global corporate Clinton neo-liberals and Bush neo-cons are claiming as the 21st Century economy and how that relates to what we all know is a coming fresh water crisis.
First, I want to remind everyone---whether Democratic or Republican the goal of political philosophy tied to global corporate tribunal rule---when I say Clinton neo-liberals are the same as Bush neo-cons because they are both merging into Libertarian Marxism----Stalinism. Notice they are trying to move labor unions over to what they claim are socialist, left-leaning Lenninism---when we can clearly see a far-right Libertarian Marxism that will become Stalist. This is what Ivy League Universities---whether neo-liberal Berkeley, Northwestern, Princeton, or Harvard----or neo-conservative---Yale, Stanford, Johns Hopkins. Look how both Clinton/Obama neo-liberals embrace Trans Pacific Trade Pact along with Bush/Cheney neo-cons----and then look at the move to privatize all that is public---including vital fresh water sources. This is not Marxist socialism---it is Marxist Stalinism folks! There is nothing left-leaning about these global corporate tribunal Marxist Stalinist! Trying to sell neo-conservatives as left-leaning with Republicans embracing labor unions being killed by Clinton neo-liberals controlling the people's Democratic Party.
JUST GET RID OF ALL THESE GLOBAL CORPORATE POLITICIANS AND GET BACK TO A DOMESTIC SOCIAL CAPITALIST DEMOCRACY FOLKS!
The Neoconservative Movement is Trotskyism
Posted on January 23, 2013 by Smilardog Veterans Today- by Jonas E. Alexis
Former neoconservative luminary Francis Fukuyama of Stanford (formerly of Johns Hopkins) compares the neoconservative movement to Leninism. Neoconservatism, according to Fukuyama, is the reincarnation to some extent of both Leninism and Bolshevism.
Fukuyama’s observation makes sense when even Irving Kristol, who founded the movement, proudly admitted that the “honor I most prized was the fact that I was a member in good standing of the [Trotskyist] Young People’s Socialist League (Fourth International).”
And this neoconservative movement, as Jewish writer Sidney Blumenthal has shown, found its political and intellectual ideology “in the disputatious heritage of the Talmud.”
Even after the birth of the neoconservative movement, many of its members such as Stephen Schwartz of the Weekly Standard and Joan Wohlstetter of the RAND Corporation still had a burning thirst for Lev Davidovich Bronstein, known as Leon Trotsky.
In that sense, the neoconservative persuasion is a subversive movement which started out in the 1920s and 30s. Legal scholar Michael Lind pointed out some years ago that,
“Most neoconservative defense intellectuals have their roots on the left, not the right. They are products of the influential Jewish-American sector of the Trotskyist movement of the 1930s and 1940s, which morphed into anti-communist liberalism between the 1950s and 1970s and finally into a kind of militaristic and imperial right with no precedents in American culture or political history.”
This was the case for Kristol, who bragged about how his Jewish intellectual comrades such as Nathan Glazer of Harvard, Philip Selznick of Berkley, Peter Rossi of Johns Hopkins, Merroe Berger of Princeton, I. Milton Sacks of Brandeis, and Seymour Melman of Columbia were not only Trotskyists but were “unquestionably the most feverishly articulate” in indoctrinating students into their Weltanschauung.
_____________________________________________
Maryland as is true of all states controlled by Clinton neo-liberals and Bush neo-cons----which sadly today are all US states----are pushing technology as the manufacturing growth because technology corporations control the Democratic Party and because Republicans are great big cyber spying and surveillance autocrats. Yet, as you see here-----technology is the industry most likely to suck the US dry of water-----worse than global BIG AG if that is possible. Now, as they look for ways to use sea water for example----it is the American people that will take the back burner---we will be subjected to the rationing of water----the recycled waste water as drinking water etc as these global industries suck the US dry.
We are using the technology industry as a base for US economy at a time it is producing things that we do not want and need. We do not need a billion different APPS---we do not need tons of BIOTECH products that are simply reformulations of existing PHARMA patents. We don't need all kinds of movement of government documents online and out of the reach of the American people. AND THIS IS WHAT DRIVES THE EVER-EXPANDING TECHNOLOGY CRAZE. We are not LUDDITES for sidelining this technology as US economy.
Think about how the internet is being handed to global corporations with these policies trying to end net neutrality----all of the internet capacity is being channeled to these massive technology businesses. The American people will not be able to afford ordinary internet connections----this is what will happen to fresh water in the US. All of the fresh water will go to these technology manufacturing plants needing the purity of water----while US citizens are pushed to alternative water and/or exposed to what is known to be contaminated and dangerous water.
This is what California's Jerry Brown has been feeding as he pretended to pass a Water Rights bill for the citizens of California. We do not need to allow less than 20% of Clinton neo-liberals control 80% of labor and justice Democratic base!
Semicondutor Manufacturing Plants can use as much water as a small city. As the Industry Grows, Finding New Ways to Recycle and Conserve Water
Posted 31 Aug 2009 | 4:00 GMT This segment is part of the Engineers of the New Millennium: The Global Water Challenge Special Report.
Transcript: Mopping Up the Purest Water
Laurie Howell: You have to prepare yourself for a lot of noise in this engineering research center. Located in a warehouse on the University of Arizona campus, this mini computer-chip manufacturing plant is a test facility. This is where engineers can re-create all the industry's water issues, so they can fix them.
Ting Sun: So, here is a typical 200-millimeter polisher—looks like—at the bottom is the rotating pad.
Laurie Howell: Chemical engineer Dr. Ting Sun gives me a tour of the polishing room, lined with various sizes of flat, round silicon wafers.
Ting Sun: And when we're ready, we're gonna bring the head down and the wafer will touch the pad. All of them are rotating, so they're gonna do the polish work.
Laurie Howell: Polishers spin the silicon wafers against a pad and a chemical mix known as slurry, polishing each layer of circuitry and then rinsing it with ultrapure water.
Ting Sun: By doing that, we can use less chemicals, so we dump less chemical into the environment, so that helps a lot, and also by using less of chemical, we also use less water to rinse it.
Laurie Howell: A true 21st-century chemical engineer, Sun is educated in a practice called design for the environment.
Farhang Shadman: Design for environment basically means that those who are in charge of developing new processes will have the environmental, not only environmental thinking but also the tools and techniques of environmental assessment in their way of doing research.
Laurie Howell: Dr. Farhang Shadman has directed the center since its launch in 1996. Formally called the SRC/Sematech Engineering Research Center for Environmentally Benign Semiconductor Manufacturing, it has grown to include nine universities across the U.S.
Farhang Shadman: Probably the legacy of the center is showing and proving, by many, many examples, that environmental approach to technology not only makes sense, not only it reduces cost, it may be the only way that future manufacturing is done.
Laurie Howell: Computer chipmakers watch this center closely for new technologies, and it's easy to understand why. Many semiconductor manufacturing plants are located in the water-strapped cities of the Southwest.
Farhang Shadman: One manufacturing plant uses anywhere between 2 to 4 million gallons of very, very pure water—we call it ultrapure water—per day, and that, on the average, is roughly equivalent to the water usage of a city of maybe 40 000, 50 000 people.
Laurie Howell: Shadman guides me past a room with engineers dressed head to toe in what they call “clean-room suits,” which protect the research from outside impurities. Just like surgery, semiconductor manufacturing requires a sterile environment.
Farhang Shadman: Okay, what you see here is what we call a pilot plant, a water pilot plant, and it is very unique because it essentially resembles the water purification plants of semiconductor manufacturing, except that everything is in a smaller scale and everything is research development–oriented so we can change things, things that you can not do in the real manufacturing.
Laurie Howell: So, what we're looking at right here are different stations where the water goes through purification process, water softeners, carbon filters…and that's because the water that's needed in the semiconducting industry needs to be so pure, purer than any water, anywhere.
Farhang Shadman: Yes, because the wafer that is being cleaned is already very clean. You're trying to remove very, very small traces of impurity. So, if water has any contaminants in it…it will be harmful. Very interesting point is about bacteria: We cannot tolerate any bacteria—live or dead, it doesn't matter—because of the fact that the bacteria typically have some of the trace elements in them like phosphorus, like carbon. These traces of these compounds will change the electrical properties of the silicon wafer.
Laurie Howell: And that could lead to defective computer chips and, ultimately, product recalls. So, chemical engineer Dr. Jun Yan has been developing a new water sensor that detects immediately when a silicon wafer is clean, so rinsing can stop, saving millions of gallons of water a day.
Jun Yan: Environmental concern, environmental issue, and how mankind, civilization can survive depend on what can we do and how can we approach it, so I think it's very exciting, very important, meaningful work.
Laurie Howell: Idealistic? Maybe, and maybe a whole lot more. The water sensor developed by Yan and his colleagues is already on the market and was named 2009 Product of the Year by SEMI, a global association for microelectronics and other industries.
Farhang Shadman: We want to make sure that manufacturing, and particularly high-technology manufacturing, is maintained and retained, kept in the United States, and if you do not solve some of these environmental issues and some of these resource issues, we stand the risk of losing that manufacturing to other areas.
Laurie Howell: The center has now spun off five start-up companies. And its environmental technologies are being applied outside semiconductor manufacturing and electronics, in the medical and pharmaceutical industries, among others. For Spectrum Radio, I'm Laurie Howell.
______________________________________________
I love almonds and I would want almond farming in Maryland IF IT WAS A DOMESTIC INDUSTRY. As we know, global corporate pols work exclusively to expand markets overseas so all food grown or harvested-----from Chesapeake Bay seafood, to poultry, to groves of grapes or almonds will be sold overseas and that is not sustainable. IF YOUR POLS ARE SHOUTING THEY ARE BEING SUSTAINABLE WHILE GROWING GLOBAL MARKETS---THEY ARE LYING! You cannot get Pecans in the US because they are being shipped overseas for lots of money. Yet they are using all of our water to grow them......STOP THIS CRAZINESS!
When Prince George's black Chamber of Commerce as with Baltimore's joins in with all this Clinton neo-liberalism that is global markets and global corporations and Trans Pacific Trade Pact as good for global corporations----they are the face of advancing all of this fresh water shortage policy. Black citizens make up a third of voting in Maryland----Montgomery County----land of lying, cheating, and stealing your way to wealth global corporate Clinton neo-liberalism is expanding into Prince George's County to capture that black vote----while the most neo-conservative in the world Johns Hopkins captures the Baltimore City black vote to make Maryland the most raging global corporate tribunal state it is. I speak with middle-class Montgomery County citizens supposedly progressive or Democratic and they are right there pushing Clinton neo-liberals as are all Maryland labor and justice organizations. Rural Maryland being Republican is home of the BIG AG global markets that drained 2 of Maryland's 3 aquifers dry. Global market BIG AG neo-conservatives in rural Maryland are right there in the Maryland Assembly working with Clinton neo-liberals embracing all of this global corporate capture of Maryland's economy and this is what causes the wealth inequity, the fraud and corruption, and it is why Maryland is ground zero for installing TPP, global corporate tribunal rule, and Marxist Stalinism.
YOU HAD BETTER BELIEVE THAT FRESH WATER POLICY IN THE US IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SOCIAL CAPITALIST DEMOCRATS----AND MARXIST STALINIST NEO-LIBERALS AND NEO-CONS.
Keep in mind that California was taken to neo-liberalism by Reagan and then super-sized this when Clinton took the Democratic Party to neo-liberalism. This is when BIG AG and shipping food grown in the US globally to maximize profit soared as did the sucking of US aquifers.
JUST STOPPING GLOBAL BIG AG PROTECTS OUR WATER. CLINTON NEO-LIBERALS ARE EXPANDING THIS TODAY----
The citizen’s guide to the future
.May 14 2014 3:27 PM FROM SLATE, NEW AMERICA, AND ASU
The Thirsty West: 10 Percent of California’s Water Goes to Almond Farming
That’s nuts. By Eric Holthaus
This almond orchard is being grown in a desert.Courtesy of Eric Holthaus
DENAIR, Calif.—In California’s vast Central Valley, agriculture is king. But the king appears fatally ill, and no worthy replacement is in sight, as the area noticeably reverts into the desert it was little more than a century ago.
Signs line the back roads here that run parallel to wide irrigation ditches:
“Pray for rain”
“No water = No jobs”
As I’ve already discussed in the Thirsty West series, city-dwelling Californians are a bit insulated from near-term water shortages thanks to the state’s intricate tentacles of aqueducts, pipelines, and canals that divert water from the snowcapped Sierras to the urban core along the coast. Rapid population growth looms ominously, but for now, you’ll still be able to brush your teeth in Oakland and Burbank.
By all accounts the current water crisis is far more urgent in the sprawling fields of the Central Valley. And that’s bad news for those of us who enjoy eating daily. Two simple facts explain why: California is the most productive agricultural state in the union, and agriculture uses 80 percent of California’s water. In a year with practically none of the stuff, that’s enough to send ripple effects throughout the country.
California is the nation’s leading producer of almonds, avocados, broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, grapes, lettuce, milk, onions, peppers, spinach, tomatoes, walnuts, and dozens of other commodities, according to a 2012 Department of Agriculture report (PDF). The state produces one-third of our vegetables and two-thirds of our nuts and fruits each year. While fields in iconic agricultural states like Iowa, Kansas, and Texas primarily produce grain (most of which is used to fatten animals), pretty much everything you think of as actual food is grown in California. Simply put: We can’t eat without California. But as climate change–fueled droughts continue to desiccate California, the short-term solution from farmers has been to double down on making money.
Like many Americans, I’d never visited California’s ultra-productive Central Valley before my monthlong drought-themed road trip for Slate. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect besides lots and lots of fields. Having grown up in a small town in Kansas and living now in the heart of Wisconsin’s dairy country, I’m plenty familiar with agriculture, but I’ve never seen anything remotely resembling the scale on which it’s practiced here. Agriculture here isn’t the endless fields of corn and wheat of my childhood. Thanks to California’s unique climate, fields here are comprised almost entirely of high-value cash crops.
Driving northward along California state Route 99 from Bakersfield to Fresno, we passed mile after mile of almond orchards, vineyards, and warehouses. There were enormous piles of hay on dairies the size of small towns. Citrus plantations extended to the horizon. And between them all was a crisscrossing network of irrigation ditches, most of which were dry. Coincidentally, this rural highway also bisects the heart of California’s current mega-drought, in which three-quarters of the state is currently rated “extreme” or “exceptional” by the USDA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It’s pretty easy to see why this place is the epicenter of Western water issues. I ended up spending more time here than in any other stop on the trip.
Farmers in California are forced to irrigate because of a fundamental seasonal mismatch: The vast majority of the rain and snow comes in the winter and the best growing conditions (sunlight, warmth) of California’s temperate Mediterranean climate are in the summer.
This year, farmers have to make important decisions—and it often comes down to money. If given a choice between keeping fruit trees alive (which take years to mature and can bring 10 times more money per acre), or planting rows of vegetables that live only a few months, that’s a no-brainer if you’re trying to maximize profit. This year, farmers are fallowing vegetable fields and scrambling to save high-dollar fruit and nut orchards. The result is counterintuitive: In the midst of the worst drought in half a millennium, the most water-intensive crops are getting priority.
California almonds use a stunning 1.1 trillion gallons of water each year, or enough for you to take a 10-minute shower each day for 86 million years (using a low-flow showerhead, of course). Here’s the calculation: California as a whole diverts or pumps 43 million acre-feet of water each year to supplement its meager rainfall. In total, agriculture consumes 34 million acre-feet of that. (An acre-foot is just what it sounds like: the amount of water needed to cover an acre of flat ground up to a foot, or about 325,000 gallons of water.) In 2013, there were 940,000 acres of almonds in California, according to the USDA (PDF). Each acre of almonds uses three to four acre-feet of water each year, most of which are delivered via river diversions or groundwater.
Almonds are one of California's most water-intensive crops, but during this year's epic drought farmers are planting even more. The reason? Economics.Courtesy of Eric Holthaus
Almonds alone use about 10 percent of California’s total water supply each year. That’s nuts. But almonds are also the state’s most lucrative exported agricultural product, with California producing 80 percent of the world’s supply. Alfalfa hay requires even more water, about 15 percent of the state’s supply. About 70 percent of alfalfa grown in California is used in dairies, and a good portion of the rest is exported to land-poor Asian countries like Japan. Yep, that’s right: In the middle of a drought, farmers are shipping fresh hay across the Pacific Ocean. The water that’s locked up in exported hay amounts to about 100 billion gallons per year—enough to supply 1 million families with drinking water for a year.
Though economics drive the seemingly improbable logic of California’s water exporting, that’s no reason to rush to boycott almonds. As this viral infographic from Mother Jones shows, it takes more than a gallon of water to grow a single almond, and it may take 220 gallons of water to produce a large avocado. But pound-for-pound, there’s an order of magnitude more water needed to get meat and dairy to your plate. A stick of butter requires more than 500 gallons of water to make. A pound of beef takes up to 5,000 gallons. More than 30 percent of California’s agricultural water use either directly or indirectly supports growing animals for food. (As Slate’s L.V. Anderson recently wrote, one of the single most effective actions to combat climate change would be if everyone in the world went vegetarian overnight. It would also likely wreck our economy.)
Later this year, as the effects of California’s drought reverberate through America’s supermarkets, they’ll be what amounts to a de facto water tax: The biggest price increases will be found with some of the most water-intensive crops.
Farmers here are turning to groundwater to make up the difference—and that’s where things get worse. The shocking truth is, California is the last state that doesn’t regulate groundwater pumping, even as supplies are dwindling. That means the motto around here right now is, to borrow another Mother Jones headline: “Drill baby drill (for water, that is).” In some overpumped places, the ground has already sunk by dozens of feet. There are indications that the debate could be changing. In April, a series of conservation bills were presented in the state Senate, with the intention of using the current crisis to address the issue of slipping groundwater supply.
The stakes are so high and the backlog for new water wells is so long that some farmers are buying their own million-dollar drilling rigs, just to protect their massive investments. Wildcatting drilling crews are working 24 hours a day to keep up with demand.
California will never solve its water crisis if the aquifer keeps getting more and more holes to extract groundwater. But in dry years like this one, the state’s agriculture would almost cease to be without groundwater. One short-term answer is more efficient methods, like drip irrigation. The problem is, irrigation technology has gotten so good that typically the end result is increased yields. And the more efficient the irrigation, the less water gets into the soil for groundwater recharge.
While agriculture isn’t a monolith, you’d think an industry dependent on water would be fighting for its survival by addressing the core of the problem. Yet some subsets of the industry seem to refuse to accept the new reality.
_______________________________________________
Do we really need a tee shirt for every day or occasion or jeans as the only thing we wear? These are the kinds of changes any REAL progressive would be shouting -----yet these industries control our pols and that is sucking all of our fresh water. So, as we rebuild American manufacturing we would not want these kinds of factories and certainly not global corporations coming back to America to produce for the world!
A REAL progressive labor and justice liberal would be shouting against technology expansion as the 21st Century economy-----that is how you know a Clinton neo-liberal posing as progressive. They cannot push technology as the new US economy and pretend to be environmentalists----THIS IS HOW I KNOW THEY ARE LYING!
The REAL progressive labor and justice Democrats will be those pushing global corporations away from controlling local and state economies----they will be the ones that see technology is being used
FOR THE WRONG REASONS BY CLINTON NEO-LIBERALS AND BUSH NEO-CONS AS THEY BECOME MORE AND MORE AUTOCRATIC AND REPRESSIVE.
Just how many 'innovations' can be made and still look like it is water-friendly?
It Takes 2700 Liters of Water to Make a T-Shirt
by 3p Contributor on Wednesday, Feb 6th, 2013
by Julie Malone
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and National Geographic provides a new video, “Make Each Choice Count,” based on water usage in textile production. The growth, manufacturing, transporting, and washing of cotton uses huge amounts of water.
For example, it takes about 2,700 liters of water to make just one t-shirt , which is enough water for one person to drink for 900 days. And, let’s not forget the wear and tear on the t-shirt once purchased. One load of washing uses 40 gallons of water and five times more energy to dry it. How often do you wash that t-shirt: once a week or month? Fortunately, there are ways to help the problem, skip the drying and ironing process and hang your t-shirt to air dry. You might save 1/3 of your t-shirt’s carbon footprint. The choices we make today affect the future needs of others.
Our society believes there is plenty of consumable water to go around for everyone. Not really. Our planet’s water is 97 percent salty and two percent snow and ice, which leaves less than one percent that we can access. However, 70 percent of that one percent is used to grow crops. Cotton is a very thirsty crop. Can you imagine how many t-shirts are in our city, towns, state, country, globally, and on this planet?
Waterfootprint.org, a learning platform for connecting diverse communities interested in sustainability, equitability and efficiency of water use, mentions that cotton farming is the largest consumer of water in the apparel supply chain, and is used in 40 percent of all clothing worldwide.
Fortunately, there is good news from the industry. Companies are making great strides in reducing their water footprint for cotton. Major textile brands are looking towards more eco-friendly cotton production. WWF works with farmers and the businesses that buy their crops to develop sustainable farming methods. This takes the strain off water supplies, not just for cotton, but for other “thirsty crops” like sugar cane and rice.
Farmers in Pakistan and India, as well as CEOs in the United States and South Africa, are being helped by the WWF to assist people to use water more responsibly. With WWF’s support, the Better Cotton Initiative is working with farmers to grow cotton with less water. The Better Cotton Initiative is an intense cooperation consisting of a multi-stakeholder group of organizations that work together to find better, more sustainable way of growing cotton to introduce to the public.
In Pakistan, the Initiative has worked with 75,000 farmers who, as a result, have reduced their water use by 39 percent and increased their income by 11 percent. They also used 47 percent less pesticide and 39 percent less chemical fertilizer. By using less pesticides and chemical fertilizer in the United States, the rivers are less likely to transport pollutants to The Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico, a large region of water that is very low in oxygen, and therefore can’t support life. That’s good for companies, good for other communities downstream, good for the fish, birds and other creatures that depend on rivers and wetlands, and good for people like you who care about where your t-shirts come from. The textile industry can bring a better product to the customer, however, it is up to the customer to play their part in water efficiency also.
The Dead Zone’s website shows an animation of how the above chemicals, and water from farms, rivers, streams, feed lots, and city streets from 40 percent of the U.S. runs down the Mississippi, Ohio, Arkansas, Red, and Missouri Rivers, where the water all collects in the Mississippi River and down to the mouth of the Gulf of Mexico. The result: bottom-dwellers such as snails, worms, starfish, and crabs can’t escape the dead zone’s oxygen poor water – so they die. Fish and shrimp swim out of the area, which could cause shrimp supply to drop and seafood prices to rise.
Julie Malone, based in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, is an environmental researcher. She is graduate student at the University of Denver and has a M.A.S. degree in Environmental Policy and Management and is working on her M.S. in Legal Administration. Her academic work can be found on knowourplanet.com.
__________________________________________
Now, we know desalination will be where global corporate pols go to satisfy global corporations. As we see here-----if your pols are pretending to be energy efficient and green while growing these alternatives to fresh water---
THEY ARE LYING. THE SOLUTION IS NOT TO ALLOW GLOBAL CORPORATIONS TO USE AND ABUSE OUR FRESH WATER.
So, a pol that shouts I am green that allows fracking to go wild----who promotes natural gas as a green energy source---IS LYING AND IS A CLINTON NEO-LIBERAL---GET RID OF THEM!
Below is a long article----please glance through and think----we are putting so much time into academic research tied to corporate products that kill our futures instead of academic research that tells us we are going in the wrong direction----this is what corporate universities vs academic universities working in the public interest is about. These desalination methods are already known to put extreme pressure on an already stressed ocean water balance-----WE KNOW THAT. Because we have allowed Clinton neo-liberals and Bush neo-cons to corporatize and make product mills of our universities----all of the research moves these bad economic policies along.
It will be the American people pushed to these desalination water products just as in third world nations where US corporations overseas have devastated those fresh water sources.
All of these technologies are funded by our Federal, state, and local tax revenue under the shout of JOBS, JOBS, JOBS. Who is supporting all of this research pretending to be GREEN? National labor and justice organization leaders shouting GREEN JOBS FOR UNDERSERVED COMMUNITIES which are the ones being killed with lost water rights.
Science, Tech & Environment
Desalination is an expensive energy hog, but improvements are on the way
Ensia
May 15, 2015 · 9:00 AM EDT
It seems simple enough: Take the salt out of water so it’s drinkable.
But it’s far more complex than it appears at first glance. It’s also increasingly crucial in a world where freshwater resources are progressively strained by population growth, development, droughts, climate change and more. That’s why researchers and companies from the United States to Australia are fine-tuning a centuries-old concept that might be the future of quenching the world’s thirst.
“When it comes to increasing water supplies, you have four options: Increase your amount of reuse, increase storage, conserve it or turn to a new source,” says Tom Pankratz, a desalination consultant and current editor of the weekly trade publication "Water Desalination Report." “And for many places around the world, the only new source is desalination.”
Costly Process
Desalination technology has been around for centuries. In the Middle East, people have long evaporated brackish
groundwater or seawater, then condensed the vapor to produce salt-free water for drinking or, in some cases, for agricultural irrigation.
Over time the process has become more sophisticated. Most modern desalination facilities use reverse osmosis, in which water is pumped at high pressure through semipermeable membranes that remove salt and other minerals.
Worldwide about 300 million people get some freshwater from more than 17,000 desalination plants in 150 countries. Middle East countries have dominated that market out of necessity and energy availability, but with threats of freshwater shortages spreading around the world, others are rapidly joining their ranks. Industry capacity is growing about 8 percent per year, according to Randy Truby, comptroller and past president of the International Desalination Association, an industry group, with “bursts of activity” in places such as Australia and Singapore.
In the United States, a $1 billion plant is being built in Carlsbad, California, to provide about seven percent of the drinking water needs for the San Diego region. When it goes online in late 2015 it will be the biggest in North America, with a 50-million-gallon-per-day capacity. And California currently has about 16 desalination plant proposals in the works.
But desalination is expensive. A thousand gallons of freshwater from a desalination plant costs the average US consumer $2.50 to $5, Pankratz says, compared to $2 for conventional freshwater.
It’s also an energy hog: Desalination plants around the world consume more than 200 million kilowatt-hours each day, with energy costs an estimated 55 percent of plants’ total operation and maintenance costs. It takes most reverse osmosis plants about three to 10 kilowatt-hours of energy to produce one cubic meter of freshwater from
seawater. Traditional drinking water treatment plants typically use well under 1 kWh per cubic meter.
And it can cause environmental problems, from displacing ocean-dwelling creatures to adversely altering the salt concentrations around them.
Research into a suite of seawater desalination improvements is underway to make the process cheaper and more environmentally friendly — including reducing dependence on fossil fuel–derived energy, which perpetuates the vicious cycle by contributing to climate change that contributes to freshwater shortages in the first place.
Membrane Upgrade
Most experts say that reverse osmosis is as efficient as it’s going to get. But some researchers are trying to squeeze more by improving the membranes used to separate salt from water.
Membranes currently used for desalination are mainly thin polyamide films rolled into a hollow tube through which the water wicks. One way to save energy is to increase the diameter of the membranes, which is directly correlated with how much freshwater they can make. Companies are increasingly moving from eight-inch to 16-inch diameter membranes, which have four times the active area.
“You can produce more water while reducing the footprint for the equipment,” says Harold Fravel Jr., executive director of the American Membrane Technology Association, an organization that advances the use of water purification systems.
A lot of membrane research is focused on nanomaterials — materials about 100,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair. MIT researchers reported in 2012 that a membrane made of a one-atom-thick sheet of
carbon atoms called graphene could work just as well and requires less pressure to pump water through than polyamide, which is about a thousand times thicker. Less pressure means less energy to operate the system, and, therefore, lower energy bills.
Graphene is not only durable and incredibly thin, but, unlike polyamide, it’s not sensitive to water treatment compounds such as chlorine. In 2013, Lockheed Martin patented the Perforene membrane, which is one atom thick with holes small enough to trap salt and other minerals but that allow water to pass.
Another popular nanomaterial solution is carbon nanotubes, says Philip Davies, an Aston University researcher who specializes in energy efficient systems for water treatment. Carbon nanotubes are attractive for the same reasons as graphene — strong, durable material packed in a tiny package — and can absorb more than 400 percent of their weight in salt.
Membranes have to be swapped out, so carbon nanotubes’ durability and high absorption rate could reduce replacement frequency, saving time and money.
Membrane technology all “sounds sexy, but it’s not easy,” Pankratz says. “There are engineering challenges when making something so thin that still maintains integrity.”
Graphene and carbon nanotubes are decades away from widespread use, says Wendell Ela, a University of Arizona chemical and environmental engineering professor. “I do see them having an impact, but it’s a ways out.”
Truby said barriers to commercialization include engineering such small materials and making new membranes compatible with current plants and infrastructure.
“It’ll be key to upgrade systems without tearing [them] down and building a whole new plant,” he says.
Forward Osmosis
Others are looking beyond reverse osmosis to another process known as forward osmosis. In forward osmosis, seawater is drawn into the system by a solution that has salts and gases, which creates a high osmotic pressure difference between the solutions. The solutions pass through a membrane together, leaving the salts behind.
Ela says forward osmosis will “probably be most efficient as a pretreatment and not as a stand-alone treatment at commercial seawater plants” because reverse osmosis performs better at large scale. As a pretreatment, forward osmosis can lengthen reverse osmosis membranes’ lifespan and promote overall system health by reducing the needed disinfectants and other pretreatment options.
The process should use less energy than reverse osmosis, Ela says, since it’s driven by thermodynamics. But last summer MIT scientists reported that forward osmosis for desalination might prove more energy intensive than reverse osmosis due to the high salt concentration in the solution resulting from the first step.
British company Modern Water operates the first commercial forward osmosis plant in Oman, in the Arabian Peninsula’s southeastern coast. At 26,000 gallons per day, the system has a much smaller capacity than most large-scale reverse osmosis systems. Company officials did not return requests for comments on the plant. However a company report noted that the plant had a 42 percent reduction in energy compared to reverse osmosis.
Heather Cooley, water program director with the Pacific Institute, a California-based sustainability research organization, says most forward osmosis technology is still in the research and development phase, and that commercial use is five to 10 years out.
Dilution Solution
Another approach to reducing the energy cost of desalination is RO-PRO, or reverse osmosis pressure retarded osmosis. RO-PRO works by passing an impaired freshwater source, such as wastewater, through a membrane into the highly saline solution leftover from reverse osmosis, which would normally be discharged to the ocean. The mixing of the two produces pressure and energy that is used to power a reverse osmosis pump.
Inspired by a system used by Statkraft, a Norway-based hydropower and renewable energy company, University of Southern California environmental engineering professor Amy Childress and colleagues are now piloting RO-PRO in California. Childress says “optimistic” estimates show RO-PRO can reduce the energy needed for reverse osmosis 30 percent. She notes that some unspecified companies have shown interest in their pilot.
Recapturing and Renewable Energy
Fravel says many plants are trying to recapture energy from within the process. Turbochargers, for example, take kinetic energy from the outgoing stream of concentrated saltwater and reapply it to the side of incoming seawater. “You might have 900 [pounds per square inch] on the feed side and the concentrate might be coming out at 700 psi. That’s a lot of energy in the concentrate stream,” he says.
Incorporating renewables into the energy input side of things is a particularly promising approach to enhancing desalination’s sustainability.Pretreating water before it goes to membranes can also save energy. “The better you can clean water before it goes into reverse osmosis, the better it runs,” Fravel says. Plants in Bahrain, Japan, Saudi Arabia and China are using pretreatment for a smoother reverse osmosis process.
Incorporating renewables into the energy input side of things is a particularly promising approach to enhancing desalination’s sustainability. Currently an estimated 1 percent of desalinated water comes from energy from renewable sources, mainly in small-scale facilities. But larger plants are starting to add renewables to their energy portfolio.After years of struggling with drought, Australia brought six desalination plants online from 2006 to 2012, investing more than $10 billion. The plants all use some renewables for power, mostly through nearby wind farms that put energy into the grid, Pankratz says. And the Sydney Water desalination plant, which supplies about 15 percent of water to Australia’s most populous city, is powered by offsets from the 67-turbine Capital Wind Farm about 170 miles to the south.
Solar energy is attractive for many heavy desalination countries — particularly those in the Middle East and the Caribbean where sun is plentiful. In one of the more ambitious projects, the United Arab Emirates energy company Masdar announced in 2013 it’s working on the world’s largest solar powered desalination plant, capable of producing more than 22 million gallons per day, with a planned launch in 2020.
Environmental impacts
Plans to use seawater, of course, must consider the implications for sea life. A lot of desalination facilities use open ocean intakes; these are often screened, but the desalination process can still kill organisms during intake or inside the plant’s treatment phases, Cooley says. New subsurface intakes, which go beneath the sand to use it as a natural filter, could help alleviate this concern.
Also, there’s the problem of how to get rid of a lot of very briny water after desalination. Every two gallons a facility takes in means one gallon of drinkable water and one gallon of water that is about twice as salty as when it came in. Most plants discharge this back into the same body of water that serves as the intake source.
Ela says smaller plants, such as the forward osmosis plant in Oman, could be the future of desalination technology.The RO-PRO technology offers one way to reduce the salt concentration in the discharge, which can harm bottom-dwelling creatures. Another method gaining popularity is the use of diffusers, a series of nozzles that increase the volume of seawater mixing with the concentrate discharge preventing spots of high salt.
In one of the more novel recent studies addressing ocean discharge, Davies of Aston University heated up briny discharge with solar energy to convert magnesium chloride into magnesium oxide, which he calls “a good agent to absorb carbon dioxide.” The research is still is the nascent stages, but could have the dual environmental
benefit of reducing discharge and removing CO2 from the ocean using solar power to zap the concentrate.
Size Wise
Ela says smaller plants, such as the forward osmosis plant in Oman, could be the future of desalination technology. A lot of the newer innovations could make economic sense on a smaller scale, and companies wouldn’t have to invest so much in infrastructure, he says.
“Instead of large plants, we might get down to 10,000 gallons per day desalination plants,” Ela says. “I see decentralization and small desalination plants serving small communities.”
This also would provide environmental benefits such as allowing renewable energy to play a larger role, since it’s much easier to power small plants with solar and wind than large ones, he says.
Pankratz says desalination will always be more expensive than treating freshwater. Still, innovations will help desalination become an increasingly workable option as the demand for freshwater grows in an increasingly thirsty world.
_____________________________________________
While Wall Street and global corporate pols are capturing all of the world's fresh water to sell to the rich of the world at high prices-----this is what will be sent to the American people. We will get all of these sources touted as being safe----while global corporations provide the data saying it is so. We know already Penn State University was caught giving data that fracking was not hurting drinking water that was not true----we know Johns Hopkins has been caught time and again providing data that protects corporations over people.
WE KNOW IF CORPORATIONS CONTROL OUR GOVERNMENT THAT WE WILL BE SUBJECTED TO THE WORST OF WATER CONDITIONS. LET'S STOP IT NOW BY GETTING RID OF CLINTON NEO-LIBERALS IN ALL DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY ELECTIONS. BE THE CANDIDATE THAT RUNS AGAINST A CLINTON NEO-LIBERAL AND BUSH NEO-CON.
Global corporations are already selling bottled recycled waste water around the world----guess where those bottled water are being sold?
The point continues to be-----WE KNOW WE ARE HEADING TOWARDS FRESH WATER SHORTAGE SO WHY ARE WE EXPANDING INDUSTRIES THAT SUCK OUR WATER SUPPLY DRY AND CONTAMINATE IT?????!!!!!
From toilet to tap: Getting a taste for drinking recycled waste water
By Kieron Monks, for CNN
Updated 10:46 AM ET, Thu May 1, 2014
- U.S. and beyond increasingly looking to reusing sewage water for drinking
- Half the world population will face water scarcity by 2030
- Reused water is completely healthy, but psychological barriers remain
- Singapore produces large amounts of high-quality recycled water
But business is booming in California's Orange County Water District (OCWD), through a pioneering wastewater treatment facility that recycles used water -- or sewage -- and returns it to the drinking supply. The plant is expanding production from 70 to 100 million gallons per day, enough for 850,000 people, around one-third of the county population. As the OWCD output is mixed with the main groundwater supply it reaches over 70% of residents.
Global problem
Sewer water recycled to tap water? 01:50PLAY VIDEOThe facility is among the oldest and largest of its type in the world, and could represent a model solution for a global problem. The U.N. warns that half the world population will face water scarcity by 2030, accelerated by climate change and population growth. Shortages on such a scale would threaten food production, as well as a health crisis through increased exposure to unsanitary water, which already kills millions each year through waterborne diseases such as cholera and diarrhea.
But the introduction of reuse systems has been difficult, with a high degree of public skepticism. Orange County began recycling water for non-potable use in the 1970s, but only began contributing to the drinking supply in 2008, combined with a comprehensive PR and education campaign to allay public fears.
Operators now feel the system is well established and ready to scale up. "It's a watershed moment right now, we're seeing widespread acceptance of these technologies," OCWD General Manager Mike Markus said. "As the shortages become more extreme and water supplies are cut, it has raised awareness that we need to find alternative resources."
The process works by re-routing a proportion of the 1.3 billion gallons of waste water generated in Southern California each day into a three-step treatment. The first is microfiltration of the treated waste water to remove solids, oils and bacteria, before the resulting liquid goes through reverse osmosis, pushing it through a fine plastic membrane that filters out viruses and pharmaceuticals. The water is then treated with UV light to remove any remaining organic compounds, before joining the main groundwater supply, which must pass strict quality controls to meet legal standards, and distribution to households.
The OCWD says the water exceeds all state and federal drinking water standards. Safety has also been established in pioneering projects around the world. Water-insecure Singapore, previously reliant on imports, now delivers 30% of its needs through the NEWater reclamation facility. Although only a small amount is added to its reservoirs, the output surpasses WHO standards for potable use to the extent that a high proportion is directed for industrial uses requiring ultra-clean water.
One of the world's earliest schemes, in Windhoek, Namibia, has been in operation since 1968 and has tackled both shortage and water-borne diseases. Over half of the Sub Saharan African population faces water insecurity, and the greatest health risk, diarrhea, kills over a million people each year in the region. But research showed that in the 1970s disease occurred at lower rates for people supplied by the Windhoek plant than through conventional treated sources.
"Standards are stricter because of the novelty of the technology and process," says Benedito Braga, President of the World Water Council. "The quality from sewage is very good, as good or better than the tap water in any city in the developed world."
The message is now being heeded and the model is spreading. California has put $1 billion into funding recycling for potable use ($800 million of that in low-interest loans), with new initiatives launched in Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego.
Texas, parts of which are also severely affected by drought, aims to generate 10% of all new supplies through reclaimed water by 2060. A facility in Big Spring has introduced the first "Direct Potable Reuse" scheme in the United States by sending recycled water to the final treatment plant without passing it through groundwater reserves.
Dealing with disgust
In each case, public relations are key, as recycled water schemes have been historically shot down by public disgust at the concept. This was most vividly shown in the Australian city of Toowoomba in 2006 when local activists represented by the group "Citizens against drinking sewage" defeated plans to introduce reclaimed sources, citing health risks and emotive factors.
Clean water solutions for Haiti 05:33PLAY VIDEOBut Australia also shows the extent to which attitudes have changed. After a three-year public trial, the city of Perth will receive up to 20% of its drinking water from reclaimed sources in coming decades, with a reported 76% public support. A network of similar programs is being established across the country, according to the Australian Water Recycling Center of Excellence.
Psychologists say the aversion is deeply held and difficult -- but not impossible -- to overcome. "The disgust comes from intuitive concepts of contagion," says Dr. Carol Nemeroff of the University of South Maine, who has studied reactions to reclaimed water. "It is magical in nature, the same type of thinking that underlines voodoo practices."
"One of the best ways to get past it is perceptual cues -- if you can see sparkling fresh, clear water, and taste it that helps to overcome the concept ... the contagion type thinking decreases with familiarity," says Nemeroff, adding that necessity can also be a key driver. "If you're desperate you'll override anything for survival."
Energy and cost
In Orange County and other facilities, mixing the output with groundwater is a largely unnecessary, confidence-building measure to allay public fears. But as awareness improves, operators hope to move from indirect to direct potable reuse, which would bring down energy use and costs, while avoiding the counter-intuitive step of re-contaminating purified water.
"The main cost is energy and that is coming down all the time," says Mike Markus. "Improvements in membrane technology allow us to use less pressure to do the same thing." The energy cost of reverse osmosis has come down by 75% since the 1970s, he says, while emerging technologies such as Aquaporin may reduce it further. Even now, the cost is favorable compared with desalination or imported water in California.
Markus hopes such advances will allow for the creation of portable modular units that can be cheaply transported to the areas of the world with the greatest need.
Campaign group Water Reuse does much of its work in education outreach, through messages such as the "Downstream" concept, that all water is ultimately recycled. "It's the same water now as when dinosaurs walked the earth," says executive director Melissa Meeker. "It's about understanding the water cycle and how we fit into it. Once people think about it, they become more open-minded."
If costs continue to fall and public acceptance continues to grow, waste water can become a major defense against the projected scarcities of this century. The World Water Council projects that recycled sewage will be a normalized source of drinking water in cities around the world within 30 years, and much of the infrastructure and technology is already in place. It's up to us now to get used to it.
______________________________________________
As the US works to build its factory and manufacturing jobs we all want to see-----it matters first that they are local, small businesses and not global manufacturing corporations that will mass produce to send overseas. WE WANT TO REBUILD OUR MANUFACTURING WITH SMALL AND LOCAL FACTORIES FOLKS---DO NOT ALLOW GLOBAL CORPORATIONS TO COME BACK AS TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT SEEKS TO DO. Second, we need to rebuild our factory base with products that are not water-intensive as we A...LL KNOW THE US IS COMING TO A FRESH WATER SHORTFALL. Technology is one of the most water-intensive industries and yet, technology is what global corporate pols intend to make central in our manufacturing as it is in our economy. IF YOU KEEP ELECTING CLINTON NEO-LIBERALS ALL ECONOMIC AND INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT WILL BE DRIVEN BY WALL STREET AND GLOBAL CORPORATIONS. If you elect REAL progressive labor and justice social liberals they will look at what fits best for your local economy and you as workers. See the difference?
water Program
The Hidden Water in Everyday Products
Grace Communications
Although we don’t see it, millions of gallons of water go into the products we buy, use and throw away. The factories that manufacture everyday materials like paper, plastic, metal and fabric depend on water to make and clean their products. Becoming aware of how we use and reuse products is an important step towards water conservation.
Water is used in the production of many materials and finished products we personally use everyday. Take cars, for example. It takes 75,000 gallons of water to produce one ton of steel. Since the average car contains about 2,150 pounds of steel, that means over 80,000 gallons of water is needed to produce the finished steel for one car. The gasoline that fuels a car also requires water consumption: approximately 1 to 2.5 gallons of water is used in the process of refining a gallon of gasoline.
It takes 24 gallons of water to make 1 pound of another everyday material: plastic. In fact, it takes at least twice as much water to produce a plastic water bottle as the amount of water in the water bottle. And the water footprint of 1 pound of cotton is 1,320 gallons. That’s more than 700 gallons of water for one new cotton shirt.
American industrial facilities withdraw over 18.2 billion gallons of fresh water per day. But due to increasingly efficient manufacturing practices, these factories have actually reduced water use by 30 percent since 1985. While many factories are making an effort to reduce their use and save water, American consumers aren’t always doing their part. In 2008, for example, we threw out 34.48 million tons of paper and 27.93 million tons of plastic — both of which are water-intensive materials that could be re-used and/or recycled. Every piece of paper and plastic container we toss in the trash is just water down the drain.
Cutting back on consumption of manufactured goods reduces the number of products that are made, in turn reducing the amount of water used in factories. Additionally, recycling the products we've already used can have a positive effect. For example, you can save about 3.5 gallons of water just by recycling a pound a paper – the same amount found in a typical daily newspaper. By doing little things like recycling at home, reusing items when we can and using fewer plastic bags and paper towels, we can each make a big difference. Every drop counts!
RSS Feed
