Basic Survival: Clean Water in an Obamanation

Modern humans need plentiful clean energy, but they also need clean water in abundant supply. Two interesting new approaches to water purification promise to expand the availability of pure clean water significantly.

A U.S. company has developed new revolutionary ways of purifying water in developing countries. California-based Pure Bioscience has developed a breakthrough platform technology called silver dihydrogen citrate (SDC), which is an electrolytically generated source of stabilized ionic silver.The chemical compound found to be safe, tasteless and odorless as water could eliminate the threat of dangerous viruses, like Cholera from drinking water in only 10 minutes. The company says Africa, where cholera and other water-born diseases are prominent stands a greater chance to benefit...Krall said the product would be most useful to most rural African communities who do not have easy access to improved quality water supply. _Source

In an Obamanation, such technology would also likely find a place in inner cities and other areas of widespread unemployment and economic devastation.

Another fascinating new approach to water purification comes from a company called Porifera:

Porifera, a spin out of Lawrence Livermore National Labs, has come up with a way to skirt the manufacturing problem and devise a product that leverages the unique thinness of single walled nanotubes. It has made a water filter of single walled carbon nanotubes. The tubes are packed closely together and the water flows through them like it flows through straws. Chirality doesn’t matter, said company representatives I spoke to at the California Cleantech Open, which held its award gala in San Francisco tonight. The opening of the tubes is so small (a few nanometers wide) that bacteria, biological material and other impurities get cleaned out of the water because they can’t fit where water molecules can. The filter will also likely be useful for desalinating seawater, although purifying wastewater will likely be the first application.

Another added bonus: because the impurities get stuck outside of the tubes, membrane fouling is less of a problem. It is difficult to clean traditional membranes because material can be caught inside the membrane. If bacteria or salts accumulate on the outside, they can just be swirled away with water.

Overall, Porifera’s array could cut the cost of desalination by 25 percent or more. In traditional purification and desalination systems, large amounts of energy are required to pressurize water and force it through a membrane. Here, gravity does a lot of the work. _Source

Combining nanotubes with solid-state water purification compounds such as silver dihydrogen citrate would provide a double safeguard. Nanotechnology promises far more revolutionary products along the same lines in the near future.

Basic needs of humans include food, water, shelter, clothing, sanitation, energy, and basic physical and mental health care provisions. Incompetent governments of the third world have difficulty providing even the basics. As governments of the western world begin to function more like third world governments, expect the same problems to crop up near where you live. Be prepared.