Category: water

Harvesting fog to make water

On By A.P.In water, water purificationLeave a comment

Peña Blanca is a small agricultural community 300 km north of Santiago.

In this arid coastal region, ‘fog catchers’ — large nets strung up in areas with thick fog and high winds — are used to collect water.

The technique was pioneered in Chile in the 1950s. The fog is pushed through fine mesh where it condenses, trickles down, and gets collected below. It’s a cheap, effective, and clean way to source water.

The nets harvest precious water for crops and animals: 140 square meters provide 840 liters of water per day, shared among 85 landowners.

“Water shortage is a worldwide problem and we are not oblivious to it,” says Daniel Rojas, community leader. “It rains less and less, there is a lack of vegetation, fewer crops and people are affected in every sense. But here we have a natural resource that wasn’t being exploited.”

The ‘camanchaca’ is a thick coastal fog which rolls in most days. It blocks the sun, but the low visibility and wind is welcomed by the locals.

The Dar Si Hmad project in Morocco is significantly bigger, and uses next generation technology. The water collected here is clean enough to drink. And there are plans to use newer nets which are more efficient, doubling the amount of water they currently collect.

“They call me the fog queen,” laughs Dr Jamila Bargach.

She has good reason to smile. As director of the world’s largest fog catching project, she picked up an award at the 2016 UN climate conference in Marrakech for the work carried out by her women-led NGO.

“Our new nets have a mean average of 22 liters per square meter, which will service about 1,300 people, about 13 villages,” she says.

The fog catchers have changed the lives of women in the Sahara, who previously scheduled their days around the chore of fetching and carrying water for their families.

“The average time is 3 hours per day to get your basic 30 liters. This is becoming even more difficult because you have to walk further with the consequences of climate change: desertification and the rising temperatures,” says Dr Bargach.

“So where there’s fog, we can harness it for the community, store it when it’s needed, and then use it later, instead of looking for very expensive and fossil-based solutions like desalinizing water, or digging more bore holes, looking for even deeper aquifers.”

As with any project, it needs to be economically viable. And that’s one of the reasons Dar Si Hmad charges for its water.

“We do charge for the water, otherwise how will we keep up with the maintenance? We have aligned the prices with government prices, and we have taken 20 percent off, because we’re dealing with very poor communities. But let me tell you one thing. Even with water, the moment it becomes free, it will lose its value.”

In Chile the economic opportunities are a little different. Peña Blanca now boasts an award-winning ale from the Atrapaniebla brewery.

Marcos Carcuro and his brother have their own nets alongside those belonging to the village.

“At first they told us it was a crazy idea to brew beer from clouds”, says Carcuro. “But later, seeing the results of our first prototypes, we realized that it was going to be a better product than those made with regular water.”

Where the weather suits, and when maintenance costs are met, fog catchers provide a lifeline in vulnerable communities across the world. From Chile to Morocco, it’s a proven sustainable and scalable solution to water scarcity.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/28/world/eco-solutions-fog-catchers/index.html

Jupiter’s Moon Ganymede Has a Salty Ocean with More Water Than Earth

On By A.P.In Ganymede, Jupiter, Space and Time, waterLeave a comment


The ocean there is thought to extend to 10 times the depth of Earth’s oceans.

A salty ocean is lurking beneath the surface of Jupiter’s largest moon, Ganymede, scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope have found.

The ocean on Ganymede—which is buried under a thick crust of ice—could actually harbor more water than all of Earth’s surface water combined, according to NASA officials. Scientists think the ocean is about 60 miles (100 kilometers) thick, 10 times the depth of Earth’s oceans, NASA added. The new Hubble Space Telescope finding could also help scientists learn more about the plethora of potentially watery worlds that exist in the solar system and beyond.

“The solar system is now looking like a pretty soggy place,” said Jim Green, NASA’s director of planetary science. Scientists are particularly interested in learning more about watery worlds because life as we know it depends on water to thrive.

Scientists have also found that Ganymede’s surface shows signs of flooding. Young parts of Ganymede seen in a video map may have been formed by water bubbling up from the interior of the moon through faults or cryo-volcanos at some point in the moon’s history, Green said.

Scientists have long suspected that there was an ocean of liquid water on Ganymede—the largest moon in the solar system, at about 3,273 miles (5,268 kilometers) across—has an ocean of liquid water beneath its surface. The Galileo probe measured Ganymede’s magnetic field in 2002, providing some data supporting the theory that the moon has an ocean. The newly announced evidence from the Hubble telescope is the most convincing data supporting the subsurface ocean theory yet, according to NASA.

Scientists used Hubble to monitor Ganymede’s auroras, ribbons of light at the poles created by the moon’s magnetic field. The moon’s auroras are also affected by Jupiter’s magnetic field because of the moon’s proximity to the huge planet.

When Jupiter’s magnetic field changes, so does Ganymede’s. Researchers were able to watch the two auroras “rock” back and forth with Hubble. Ganymede’s aurora didn’t rock as much as expected, so by monitoring that motion, the researchers concluded that a subsurface ocean was likely responsible for dampening the change in Ganymede’s aurora created by Jupiter.

“I was always brainstorming how we could use a telescope in other ways,” Joachim Saur, geophysicist and team leader of the new finding, said in a statement. “Is there a way you could use a telescope to look inside a planetary body? Then I thought, the aurorae! Because aurorae are controlled by the magnetic field, if you observe the aurorae in an appropriate way, you learn something about the magnetic field. If you know the magnetic field, then you know something about the moon’s interior.”

Hunting for auroras on other worlds could potentially help identify water-rich alien planets in the future, Heidi Hammel, executive vice president of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, said during the teleconference. Scientists might be able to search for rocking auroras on exoplanets that could potentially harbor water using the lessons learned from the Hubble observations of Ganymede.

Astronomers might be able to detect oceans on planets near magnetically active stars using similar methods to those used by Saur and his research team, Hammel added.

“By monitoring auroral activity on exoplanets, we may be able to infer the presence of water on or within an exoplanet,” Hammel said. “Now, it’s not going to be easy—it’s not as easy as Ganymede and Jupiter, and that wasn’t easy. It may require a much larger telescope than Hubble, it may require some future space telescope, but nevertheless, it’s a tool now that we didn’t have prior to this work that Joachim and his team have done.”

Jupiter’s moons are popular targets for future space missions. The European Space Agency is planning to send a probe called JUICE—short for JUpiter ICy moons Explorer—to Jupiter and its moons in 2022. JUICE is expected to check out Europa, Callisto and Ganymede during its mission. NASA also has its eye on the Jupiter system. Officials are hoping to send a probe to Europa by the mid-2020s.

NASA will also celebrate the Hubble telescope’s 25th anniversary this year.

“This discovery marks a significant milestone, highlighting what only Hubble can accomplish,” John Grunsfeld, assistant administrator of NASA’s Science Mission, said in the same statement. “In its 25 years in orbit, Hubble has made many scientific discoveries in our own solar system. A deep ocean under the icy crust of Ganymede opens up further exciting possibilities for life beyond Earth.”

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/jupiter-s-moon-ganymede-has-a-salty-ocean-with-more-water-than-earth/

Water is a new cash-crop in California

On By A.P.In California, Kebmodee, waterLeave a comment

The rice industry in the Sacramento Valley is taking a hard hit with the drought. Some farmers are skipping out on their fields this year, because they are cashing in on their water rights.

Many fields will stay dry because farmers will be doing what was once considered unthinkable: selling their water to Southern California.

“In the long term, if we don’t make it available we’re afraid they’ll just take it,” said Charlie Mathews, a fourth generation rice farmer with senior rights to Yuba River water.

He and his fellow growers have agreed to sell 20 percent of their allotment to Los Angeles’s Metropolitan Water District as it desperately searches to add to its dwindling supply.

It’s not really surprising that Southern California is looking for a place to buy water. But what is making news is how much they’ve agreed to pay for it: $700 per acre foot of water.

Just last year, rice farmers were amazed when they were offered $500 per acre foot. This new price means growers will earn a lot more money on the fields they don’t plant, making water itself the real cash crop in California.

“It’s much more than we ever expected to get. But at the same time, that just shows the desperation of the people that need it,” Mathews said.

The ripple effect of this will be felt around the entire state. If a Bay Area water district needs to buy more water, it will now be competing with Los Angeles to do it.

“They have to pay whatever the last price, the highest price, people will pay,” Mathews said.

Some Northern California Farmers Not Planting This Year, Sell Water To Los Angeles At $700 Per Acre Foot

Thanks to Kebmodee for bringing this to the attention of the It’s Interesting community.

Bill Gates says a new plant that can turn human feces into electricity and clean drinking water can save a huge number of lives.

On By A.P.In Recycling, waterLeave a comment

The plant, called the Omniprocessor, was designed and built by Janicki Bioenergy and backed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The facility would try to prevent diseases caused by contaminated water supplies.

A test plant is up and working at Janicki’s headquarters north of Seattle, according to a blog post by Gates. The first operational plant is planned for Senegal.

“The next-generation processor, more advanced than the one I saw, will handle waste from 100,000 people, producing up to 86,000 liters of potable water a day and a net 250 kw of electricity,” he wrote. “If we get it right, it will be a good example of how philanthropy can provide seed money that draws bright people to work on big problems, eventually creating a self-supporting industry.”

Included is a video of him drinking a glass of the water produced by the plant, which he describes as “delicious” and “as good as any I’ve had out of the bottle.”

“Having studied the engineering behind it, I would happily drink it every day. It’s that safe,” he writes on the post.

The feces is heated to 1000 degrees Celsius, or 1,832 degrees Fahrenheit to draw off the water, which is then further treated to make sure it is safe. But the dried out feces can then be burned, producing enough heat to generate electricity needed to extract the water. Excess electricity can be sold to outside users, as can the water.

Gates says diseases caused by poor sanitation kill some 700,000 children every year. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is making an effort to improve sanitation in the developing world.

“Today, in many places without modern sewage systems, truckers take the waste from latrines and dump it into the nearest river or the ocean—or at a treatment facility that doesn’t actually treat the sewage,” he wrote. “Either way, it often ends up in the water supply.”

http://money.cnn.com/2015/01/07/technology/innovationnation/gates-poop-water/index.html

Rare Diamond Reveals Earth’s Interior is All Wet

On By A.P.In Canada, diamond, Earth, Germany, Graham Pearson, Hans Keppler, kimberlite, LiveScience, mantle, Nature, olivine, ringwoodite, University of Alberta, University of Bayreuth, waterLeave a comment

A battered diamond that survived a trip from “hell” confirms a long-held theory: Earth’s mantle holds an ocean’s worth of water.

“It’s actually the confirmation that there is a very, very large amount of water that’s trapped in a really distinct layer in the deep Earth,” said Graham Pearson, lead study author and a geochemist at the University of Alberta in Canada. The findings were recently published in the journal Nature.

The worthless-looking diamond encloses a tiny piece of an olivine mineral called ringwoodite, and it’s the first time the mineral has been found on Earth’s surface in anything other than meteorites or laboratories. Ringwoodite only forms under extreme pressure, such as the crushing load about 320 miles (515 kilometers) deep in the mantle.

Most of Earth’s volume is mantle, the hot rock layer between the crust and the core. Too deep to drill, the mantle’s composition is a mystery leavened by two clues: meteorites, and hunks of rock heaved up by volcanoes. First, scientists think the composition of the Earth’s mantle is similar to that of meteorites called chondrites, which are chiefly made of olivine. Second, lava belched by volcanoes sometimes taps the mantle, bringing up chunks of odd minerals that hint at the intense heat and pressure olivine endures in the bowels of the Earth.

In recent decades, researchers have also recreated mantle settings in laboratories, zapping olivine with lasers, shooting minerals with massive guns and squeezing rocks between diamond anvils to mimic the Earth’s interior.

These laboratory studies suggest that olivine morphs into a variety of forms corresponding to the depth at which it is found. The new forms of crystal accommodate the increasing pressures. Changes in the speed of earthquake waves also support this model. Seismic waves suddenly speed up or slow down at certain depths in the mantle. Researcher think these speed zones arise from olivine’s changing configurations. For example, 323 to 410 miles (520 to 660 km) deep, between two sharp speed breaks, olivine is thought to become ringwoodite. But until now, no one had direct evidence that olivine was actually ringwoodite at this depth.

“Most people (including me) never expected to see such a sample. Samples from the transition zone and lower mantle are exceedingly rare and are only found in a few, unusual diamonds,” Hans Keppler, a geochemist at the University of Bayreuth in Germany, wrote in a commentary also published in Nature.

The diamond from Brazil confirms that the models are correct: Olivine is ringwoodite at this depth, a layer called the mantle transition zone. And it resolves a long-running debate about water in the mantle transition zone. The ringwoodite is 1.5 percent water, present not as a liquid but as hydroxide ions (oxygen and hydrogen atoms bound together). The results suggest there could be a vast store of water in the mantle transition zone, which stretches from 254 to 410 miles (410 to 660 km) deep.

“It translates into a very, very large mass of water, approaching the sort of mass of water that’s present in all the world’s ocean,” Pearson told Live Science’s Our Amazing Planet.

Plate tectonics recycles Earth’s crust by pushing and pulling slabs of oceanic crust into subduction zones, where it sinks into the mantle. This crust, soaked by the ocean, ferries water into the mantle. Many of these slabs end up stuck in the mantle transition zone. “We think that a significant portion of the water in the mantle transition zone is from the emplacement of these slabs,” Pearson said. “The transition zone seems to be a graveyard of subducted slabs.”

Keppler noted that it’s possible the volcanic eruption that brought the deep diamond to Earth’s surface may have sampled an unusually water-rich part of the mantle, and that not all of the transition-zone layer may be as wet as indicated by the ringwoodite.

“If the source of the magma is an unusual mantle reservoir, there is the possibility that, at other places in the transition zone, ringwoodite contains less water than the sample found by Pearson and colleagues,” Keppler wrote. “However, in light of this sample, models with anhydrous, or water-poor, transition zones seem rather unlikely.”

A violent volcanic eruption called a kimberlite quickly carried this particular diamond from deep in the mantle. “The eruption of a kimberlite is analogous to dropping a Mentos mint into a bottle of soda,” Pearson said. “It’s a very energetic, gas-charged reaction that blasts its way to Earth’s surface.”

The tiny, green crystal, scarred from its 325-mile (525 km) trip to the surface, was bought from diamond miners in Juína, Brazil. The mine’s ultradeep diamonds are misshapen and beaten up by their long journey. “They literally look like they’ve been to hell and back,” Pearson said. The diamonds are usually discarded because they carry no commercial value, he said, but for geoscientists, the gems provide a rare peek into Earth’s innards.

The ringwoodite discovery was accidental, as Pearson and his co-authors were actually searching for a means of dating the diamonds. The researchers think careful sample preparation is the key to finding more ringwoodite, because heating ultradeep diamonds, as happens when scientists polish crystals for analysis, causes the olivine to change shape.

“We think it’s possible ringwoodite may have been found by other researchers before, but the way they prepared their samples caused it to change back to a lower-pressure form,” Pearson said.

http://www.livescience.com/44057-diamond-inclusions-mantle-water-earth.html

North Pole now a lake

On By A.P.In Arctic, Arctic ice, Arctic Ocean, Arctic sea, Climate Change, Gloabl Warming, ice, LiveScience, National Snow & Ice Data Center, Nature, North Pole, Science, The Future, waterLeave a comment

n pole

Instead of snow and ice whirling on the wind, a foot-deep aquamarine lake now sloshes around a webcam stationed at the North Pole. The meltwater lake started forming July 13, following two weeks of warm weather in the high Arctic. In early July, temperatures were 2 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit (1 to 3 degrees Celsius) higher than average over much of the Arctic Ocean, according to the National Snow & Ice Data Center.

Meltwater ponds sprout more easily on young, thin ice, which now accounts for more than half of the Arctic’s sea ice. The ponds link up across the smooth surface of the ice, creating a network that traps heat from the sun. Thick and wrinkly multi-year ice, which has survived more than one freeze-thaw season, is less likely sport a polka-dot network of ponds because of its rough, uneven surface.

July is the melting month in the Arctic, when sea ice shrinks fastest. An Arctic cyclone, which can rival a hurricane in strength, is forecast for this week, which will further fracture the ice and churn up warm ocean water, hastening the summer melt. The Arctic hit a record low summer ice melt last year on Sept. 16, 2012, the smallest recorded since satellites began tracking the Arctic ice in the 1970s.

http://www.livescience.com/38347-north-pole-ice-melt-lake.html

Florida’s radioactive fountain of youth – is magnesium the secret?

On By A.P.In aquifer, artesian water, Carolyn Dean, Charlotte Harbor, Clean Water Act, Epsom salt, Florida, fluoride, Fountain of Youth, Gussie Baker, Hotel Punta Gorda, Jackie Snow, Juan Ponce de Leon, Lindsay Harrington, magnesium, magnesium sulfate, Margaret Baumherdt, National Geographic, Ponce de León, Punta Gorda, radium, reverse osmosis, San Pellegrino, The Magnesium Miracle, U.S. Academy of Science, United States Geological Survey, water, Water Bill, WHO, Wilson Harper, World Health Organization, Zoltan Szabo1 Comment

ftn of youth

Jackie Snow
for National Geographic
Published July 23, 2013

Five hundred years ago in June, the Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de Leon started his journey back to Puerto Rico from Florida after becoming the first European to land on mainland America. After exploring the east coast of Florida, he circled the peninsula and explored the west coast, including modern-day Charlotte Harbor, most likely the location he chose for his second voyage.

According to legend, the explorer set out in search of the fountain of youth, a fabled stream that would extend the life of anyone lucky enough to drink from it.

Thanks to the myth of Ponce de Leon’s trip, Florida—known for its large population of retirees—is now awash in “fountains of youth.” Dozens of bodies of water claim the title of the one legendary fountain, from mineral springs to deep-water wells, not to mention water from a variety of sources that is piped into various built structures.

Only one, however, is known to be radioactive. And, oddly, it might be actually extending life.

In Punta Gorda, a town on Charlotte Harbor, a blocky, green-tiled fountain abuts an empty lot near the harbor. A spigot juts out near the top to release water from the artesian well below. Each of the four sides features a picture of a ship, a tribute to Ponce de Leon.

On the side facing away from the street, a public health notice warns that the water “exceeds the maximum contaminant level for radioactivity.”

The water from the well is also heavy in sulfates, which give it a distinctive smell of rotten eggs. This hasn’t stopped the locals from drinking from it regularly.

“I drank out of that well every day,” said Gussie Baker, a resident of Punta Gorda for all of her 78 years.

Baker used to live down the road from the Hotel Punta Gorda, whose guests would frolic in a pool filled with water from the same aquifer. Baker learned to swim in the pool and passed the fountain on her way to school.

“I love artesian water,” she said. Baker doesn’t live as close to the fountain anymore, but says she would drink it if she were nearby.

Punta Gordians proudly declared the existence of a rejuvenative fountain as far back as 1894. In 1926, they mounted a collection drive to pay for the stout little structure that stands to this day. At the height of its popularity, in the mid-20th century, the handle on the tap had to be replaced every six months.

The environmental movement threatened to put a stop to the locals’ enthusiasm for the fountain. In 1974, Congress passed the Clean Water Act, requiring the Environmental Protection Agency to determine safe levels of a variety of contaminants, including radium. All public water sources were to be tested.

Punta Gorda’s water clocked in at 9.2 picoCuries of radium-226 isotope per liter when it was tested in 1983. This exceeded the recommended radium limit, set at 5 picoCuries per liter.

As a result, in 1986, the city council mulled plugging the well, moving the fountain, and hooking it up to city water. But locals fought back.

“They’ve tried several times over the years to close it down, to seal it up, to move it or hook it to the city water, and the public has always defeated that,” said Wilson Harper, a 71-year-old former water utilities supervisor better known as “Water Bill.”

“The last 15 years it’s been as quiet as a church mouse,” he said.

Lindsay Harrington has worked across the street from the fountain in a real estate office and watched the comings and goings since 1997.

Visitors “usually come with lots of plastic bottles, or big plastic jugs that hold maybe five or ten gallons,” he said.

“We did have an occasion where a gentleman would wash his car there, and I always thought maybe he was hoping it would lengthen the use he would get out of it,” he said. “It was his own automobile fountain of youth.”

Radium shows up in 3 to 4 percent of water around the country, according to a recent study by the United States Geological Survey. Many areas have no radium in their local water. Radium mostly turned up in places that had certain rock formations with particular water chemistry that created the perfect radium sink. Florida made up the third most likely area in which to find radium-laced water.

Zoltan Szabo, a co-author of the study who has worked at the United States Geological Survey for 28 years, explained that Florida’s water is frequently encased in limestone, which doesn’t absorb or store radium. “It’s like a bad paper towel,” Szabo said of the common Floridian rocks.

Artesian water supplies are especially low in oxygen, which also helps draw radium out of the water. Szabo hasn’t looked at the Punta Gorda water supply in particular but says the levels of radium at which the fountain tested are not especially dangerous.

The EPA’s recommended levels are very conservative, Szabo said, and are based on drinking a liter a day for 70 years. Even if that was the amount and length of time someone drank the water, the chance of getting cancer is still low, Szabo said, in the range of 1 in 20,000.

“You’re taking a quantifiable risk,” he said. “If you’re smoking a cigarette, you’re taking a quantifiable risk. Probably more than drinking that water.”

But radium isn’t the only thing that turns up in the water. In fact, a much more humdrum ingredient might hold the secret of its appeal. The water from the aquifer is high in magnesium, the second most common mineral in the body after calcium.

More than 80 percent of Americans are deficient in magnesium, which helps the body regulate heart muscles and control high blood pressure. The World Health Organization recommends that drinking water contain at least 25 milligrams of magnesium per liter, and a U.S. Academy of Science study from 1977 found that 150,000 deaths a year in the United States could be prevented with additional magnesium in water.

According to Carolyn Dean, author of The Magnesium Miracle, the fountain’s 46 ppm of magnesium puts it on par with other mineral waters like San Pellegrino.

The compound magnesium sulfate also makes an appearance in the water. It’s better known as Epsom salt, which has been used in baths to ease aches and pains for years.

Magnesium is regularly removed from many bottled waters by a process known as reverse osmosis. And the fluoride added to many public water supplies counteracts magnesium, too.

Magnesium is especially good for older people: Magnesium deficiency increases with age as the body stops being as efficient in absorption, and many drugs senior citizens take interfere with the body’s ability to digest magnesium.

“Water Bill” Harper has noticed that the fountain is especially popular among Punta Gorda’s older folk.

“One of the problems with city water is we have to maintain a chloride disinfection. It makes everything taste funny,” he said. “The people have learned they can go down and take that water, which is not chlorinated, and let it sit in the refrigerator.

“It’s tasty; it has no reaction with any of their medication. Also, [magnesium sulfate] keeps you regular.”

To Harper’s knowledge, the fountain’s water has not been tested for at least 25 years—although the EPA recommends biannual testing.

When this reporter sent the water off recently to be tested, it got a reading of 14.4 picoCuries per liter, plus or minus 6.4. This is, according to Szabo, within the range of what showed up in the previous test. According to the EPA website, zero is the goal for radium levels.

Between this warning and the ubiquity of bottled water, the fountain is much less popular today. Harrington says days will go by without him seeing anyone at the fountain. But there are still some dedicated drinkers.

Margaret Baumherdt has been drinking from the fountain since 1967, years before any warning went up. Baumherdt, who is now 88, moved to the area when she was in her early 40s and remembers having to wait in line to drink the water.

She gets her daughter to drive her to the fountain from her home in nearby Port Charlotte, the town across the harbor, and fills up as many as 40 gallon jugs at a time. She drinks the water exclusively and even uses it to cook meals like spaghetti. Tap water’s chlorine content doesn’t sit well with her. The fountain water, however, is just right.

“I love the taste,” she said.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/07/130719-florida-fountain-of-youth-radioactive-magnesium-health/

Chaac Ha Water Collector: Students-Designed Water-Collector, Harvests 2.5L of Drinking Water Each Night From Dew

On By A.P.In Andy Francisco Arjona Massa, Autodesk Sustainability Workshop, Álvaro Jesús Buenfil Ovando, bromeliads, Chaac Ha Water Collector, Cindy Beatriz, dew, Diana Carolina Vega Basto, invention, Kebmodee, Luis Didier Cox Tamay, Mexico, Shirley Molina, Technology, Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán, water1 Comment

dew

dew

With an idea to provide clean water consistently to rural Mexican communities where access is limited, students in the Yucatan region of Southern Mexico designed Chaac Ha Water Collector. This concept had won an award for its innovative ways of harvesting water. Along with rainwater, it can also collect up to 2.5 liters of water each night from dew alone. Amazingly, this water-harvesting concept is portable.

The Chaac Ha design-students named it after the Mayan god of rain.

On observing natural processes, the students had designed this concept. While designing the structure and texture of the membrane that captures the water, they had derived their ideas from bromeliads, which draw moisture and nutrients from the atmosphere. The bromeliad leaves are hydrophobic; their microscopic irregularities facilitate water to channel into a single reservoir. Likewise, the students have used Teflon in the case of Chaac Ha design. Its structure resembles spider web and it is inflatable for full portability.

Last year, the Chaac Ha system was recognized with the Autodesk Sustainability Workshop award. The awarded students were Diana Carolina Vega Basto, Luis Didier Cox Tamay, Andy Francisco Arjona Massa, Cindy Beatriz, Shirley Molina, and Álvaro Jesús Buenfil Ovando, from the Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán, Mérida.

Thanks to Kebmodee for bringing this to the attention of the It’s Interesting community.

http://www.designntrend.com/articles/3894/20130418/chaac-ha-students-designed-water-collector-harvests-2-5l-drinking.htm

Evidence of water on the moon discovered in samples obtained from original Apollo missions

On By A.P.In Anne Peslier, Apollo 11, Apollo missions, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Genesis Rock, Hejiu Hui, LCROSS, Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing satellite, lunar formation theory, lunar highlands, Moon, NASA, Nature Geoscience, Space and Time, The Moon, University of Michigan, water, Youxue ZhangLeave a comment

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Called the “Genesis Rock,” this lunar sample of unbrecciated anorthosite collected during the Apollo 15 mission was thought to be a piece of the moon’s primordial crust. In a paper published online Feb. 17 in Nature Geoscience, a University of Michigan researcher and his colleagues report that traces of water were found in the rock. (Credit: Photo courtesy of NASA/Johnson Space Center)

Traces of water have been detected within the crystalline structure of mineral samples from the lunar highland upper crust obtained during the Apollo missions, according to a University of Michigan researcher and his colleagues.

The lunar highlands are thought to represent the original crust, crystallized from a magma ocean on a mostly molten early moon. The new findings indicate that the early moon was wet and that water there was not substantially lost during the moon’s formation.

The results seem to contradict the predominant lunar formation theory — that the moon was formed from debris generated during a giant impact between Earth and another planetary body, approximately the size of Mars, according to U-M’s Youxue Zhang and his colleagues.

“Because these are some of the oldest rocks from the moon, the water is inferred to have been in the moon when it formed,” Zhang said. “That is somewhat difficult to explain with the current popular moon-formation model, in which the moon formed by collecting the hot ejecta as the result of a super-giant impact of a martian-size body with the proto-Earth.

“Under that model, the hot ejecta should have been degassed almost completely, eliminating all water.”

A paper titled “Water in lunar anorthosites and evidence for a wet early moon” was published online Feb. 17 in the journal Nature Geoscience. The first author is Hejiu Hui, postdoctoral research associate of civil and environmental engineering and earth sciences at the University of Notre Dame. Hui received a doctorate at U-M under Zhang, a professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences and one of three co-authors of the Nature Geoscience paper.

Over the last five years, spacecraft observations and new lab measurements of Apollo lunar samples have overturned the long-held belief that the moon is bone-dry.

In 2008, laboratory measurement of Apollo lunar samples by ion microprobe detected indigenous hydrogen, inferred to be the water-related chemical species hydroxyl, in lunar volcanic glasses. In 2009, NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing satellite, known as LCROSS, slammed into a permanently shadowed lunar crater and ejected a plume of material that was surprisingly rich in water ice.

Hydroxyls have also been detected in other volcanic rocks and in the lunar regolith, the layer of fine powder and rock fragments that coats the lunar surface. Hydroxyls, which consist of one atom of hydrogen and one of oxygen, were also detected in the lunar anorthosite study reported in Nature Geoscience.

In the latest work, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy was used to analyze the water content in grains of plagioclase feldspar from lunar anorthosites, highland rocks composed of more than 90 percent plagioclase. The bright-colored highlands rocks are thought to have formed early in the moon’s history when plagioclase crystallized from a magma ocean and floated to the surface.

The infrared spectroscopy work, which was conducted at Zhang’s U-M lab and co-author Anne Peslier’s lab, detected about 6 parts per million of water in the lunar anorthosites.

“The surprise discovery of this work is that in lunar rocks, even in nominally water-free minerals such as plagioclase feldspar, the water content can be detected,” said Zhang, the James R. O’Neil Collegiate Professor of Geological Sciences.

“It’s not ‘liquid’ water that was measured during these studies but hydroxyl groups distributed within the mineral grain,” said Notre Dame’s Hui. “We are able to detect those hydroxyl groups in the crystalline structure of the Apollo samples.”

The hydroxyl groups the team detected are evidence that the lunar interior contained significant water during the moon’s early molten state, before the crust solidified, and may have played a key role in the development of lunar basalts.

“The presence of water,” said Hui, “could imply a more prolonged solidification of the lunar magma ocean than the once-popular anhydrous moon scenario suggests.”

The researchers analyzed grains from ferroan anorthosites 15415 and 60015, as well as troctolite 76535. Ferroan anorthosite 15415 is one the best known rocks of the Apollo collection and is popularly called the Genesis Rock because the astronauts thought they had a piece of the moon’s primordial crust. It was collected on the rim of Apur Crater during the Apollo 15 mission.

Rock 60015 is highly shocked ferroan anorthosite collected near the lunar module during the Apollo 16 mission. Troctolite 76535 is a coarse-grained plutonic rock collected during the Apollo 17 mission.

Co-author Peslier is at Jacobs Technology and NASA’s Johnson Space Center. The fourth author of the Nature Geoscience paper, Clive Neal, is a professor of civil and environmental engineering and earth sciences at the University of Notre Dame. The work was supported by NASA.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130218132355.htm

Dutch council executive recommends urinating in shower to save water

On By A.P.In conservation, GroenLinks, sustainability, The Netherlands, Urination, Urine, waterLeave a comment

pee-in-shower

A council official in the Drenthe municipality of Aa en Hunze is recommending people pee while having a shower in order to save water and cash.

The council has launched a project in 2013 to increase sustainability and saving water is an integral part of the mission, the AD reports on Wednesday.

Urinating while under the show ‘saves lots of clean water and is good for the environment,’ Bert Wassink is quoted as saying. ‘If you combine showers and peeing, you save a lot of water and money, so why not?’

According to the AD, the average Dutch person uses 39 litres a day on showers and 36 litres flushing the toilet.

Wassink, who represents the left-wing green party GroenLinks, told the paper he already practises what he preaches.

http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2013/01/pee_under_the_shower_to_save_w.php