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Just Add, Umm, Water
An anonymous reader writes "The US military has devised a way to ensure its troops in battle need never go hungry - with dried food that can be rehydrated using dirty water or urine. Bleh, but lightweight bleh." The original New Scientist story is available too.
"Engineer Ed Beaudry was quoted by the New Scientist as saying that the body would not find using urine to rehydrate food toxic in the short term, but in the long term it would cause kidney damage."
I think I'd rather steal food from natives than eat US Amry-supplied kidney damaging "food".
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Fortunately, I've never been that hungry. I wonder if the phrase "I could eat my own urinated food" will catch on.
... Troops in battle are going to stop, drop their weapons, and pee on their food for a quick dinner?
ResidntGeek
Wow, just what we needed another way to make MREs more unpalatable!
I suppose you really could say the food was piss poor.
I wonder how many millions of dollars were spent on this mostly useless technology? Creating food with dirty water or urine is irrelevent. A soldier can last much longer without food than he can without water. Most people will die within five days if they don't get water. If you don't have access to clean water, you're in much worse shape. Lose 12% of your water and you're dead.
But if it helps you to survive a few days longer, that could mean the difference between life and death - you'd be able to ration your water reserve longer and still be able to eat.
Though I wonder why they didn't make the filter finer to filter out the urea.. Would it cost to much? Be to large?
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I'm not letting someone else hydrate my food.
I would like to outfit every coffee machine where I work with one of these filters so that I can pee in the coffee and not get in trouble (again). Satisfying for me, but still delicious for them. It's win-win!
I would suggest that urine would probably help the taste of MREs quite a bit...
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Just how effective is this filter at cleaning water? If it is cheap enough to be mass produced for soldiers' food, then it would be incredible for humanitarian purposes if it cleans water well. Many parts of the world cannot easily clean their own water.
Alphanos
So are they going to call them MRPs (Meals Ready to Pee on)?
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As disgusting as it sounds to rehydrate a meal with urine, at least it's "clean" (in the sense that you won't get sick from it).
But dirty water? If you're in the middle of Iraq, I suspect the water may itself pose a health risk. I can't drink the water when I visit third-world countries, and I'd certainly be worried if our troops were exposing themselves to disease.
So if you use urine, does it taste worse? Or better?
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Great, another awesome reason to go and sign up right now.
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Bleh.
Some people are like slinkies--basically useless but they bring a smile to your face when pushed down the stairs.
Urea is very small molecule only a bit bigger than water. Even if you did have a membrane that could filter it out - it would take a very long time for enough water to diffuse across into the food.
Of a technology developed for combat that could be an enormous benefit to humanitarian efforts around the world. If cheap and reliable enough, this could save hundreds of thousands of lives.
Nah, that would piss me off.
Sorry... somebody had to...
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Yes, in fact it is really hard to get food & water ( & fuel & ammo) to troops. An army is only as fast as it's supply lines. As was evident and highly reported in the push to Bagdad last year, the troops moved much faster than the supply lines and ran short on food and water. Logistics is a Huge part of any military.
I think Fry has the best review of what it probably tastes like: "What's the worst thing that can happen... ewww, it's like a party in my mouth and everyone is throwing up."
Would you mind explaining to me, Private Genius, how there's a net difference in water intake between those two scenarios?
:)
Not at all.
This allows you to reclaim water that otherwise you would have disposed of. So, if you have 2 canteens' worth of potable water and a puddle, you can drink those canteens, and then reclaim however much you need to rehydrate your meal from the puddle. This gets you 2 canteens plus part of a puddle's worth of hydration. If you don't have this, you only get 2 canteens' worth.
Alternatively you can reuse those two canteens' worth by using your urine to rehydrate your food, getting double-use out of at least some of that water.
This is just an attention (advertising) ploy. Sure, you could use urine, but it would be stupid to do so, since the salt and urea in urine would increase dehydration. If you were that short of water, the last thing you would want to do is eat; especially if it would make you even more dehydrated. A soldier could go days (weeks even) without food, but only 2-3 days without water. Using mucky water, however, makes more sense. It sounds like the new MRE package has a filter similar to the portable water filter I carry in my backack on hiking trips. It was not cheap, though, so I am guessing that most of the research is to look into how to make the filter as inexpensive as possible, so an MRE supplied with one would not go for $100 or more. Centrifuge
MREs have gotten steadily better over the years. The first meals were pretty bad. I remember dehydrated chicken & ham loaf (I'm not kidding) with horror. But by the early 1990s they were really good, and they've continued to improve over the years.
Just ask anyone who had to endure C-rations. They'll tell you about truly crappy combat rations.
As for the US Army's attempt to come up with a way to use dirty water or urine, the primary goal is to allow soldiers to use dirty water. Don't get too wrapped up in weird urine scenarios. Believe it or not, much of the world drinks water that's hazardous to the health of Americans. Delivery of potable water is a major constraint on the American way of war. We put immense logistical effort into making sure our soldiers get bottled water. This contributes to our outrageously bad tooth to tail ratio, and it makes the military more beholden on civilian contractors to provide logistics support.
Americans have shown time and time again that we prefer to win wars with logistics, and our enemies know this. Any flexibility, however small, that allows us to reduce our logistics dependency is good in my opinion.
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So now MREs taste like piss instead of tasting like shit? I'm not sure which is preferrable to be honest.
The important question is, "Is it low carb?"
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Okay, here's a reason why the US Army would like to reduce the amount of water consumed by soldiers. It seems people are under the impression that soldiers haul all their own gear and consumables. Not quite.
We use vehicles to accomplish the logistical feat of transporting soldiers, equipment and water. The US Army calculates that the average soldier consumes something like five gallons of water daily. No, not just for drinking--hygiene, cooking (i.e., field mess facilities), etc. This figure increases for desert operations, for obvious reasons. Considering that five gallons of water is 40 pounds, and considering that a division comprises something like 10,000+ soldiers, then we are looking for something on the order of tons of water required daily. What's more, most of that water will need to be purified. So, the goal here is to reduce the burden on the military's logistical infrastructure by having the soldier consume less water. Sure, it's probably an expensive experiment that will be met with failure.
What's interesting is this is not the first time there's been a *big* experiment. In the '40s, when we were fighting another crazy ideology or two (fascism, national shintoism), some nut thought that we could train our soldiers to consume less than the required amount of water--especially for desert operations. The idea there was to reduce the burden to the military's logisitical infrastructure by having the soldier consume less water. What's disappointing is this: the human body requires a minimum amount of water to operate. The Army learned that lesson by watching dozens (I've heard as many as hundreds or thousands, but that seems a tad high) of soldiers died disproving the experiment. I think the loss of human life was more expensive than the loss of a few tax dollars. Besides, I think the government wastes money in several other areas that should be reined in first.
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Wouldn't sweat and tears work if there was enough to rehydrate the pouch? They're both made of salt water. What about saliva?
Engineer Ed Beaudry was quoted by the New Scientist as saying that the body would not find using urine to rehydrate food toxic in the short term, but in the long term it would cause kidney damage.
Well that finally explains my highschool's cafeteria food...
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Frank Herbert figured out what needed to be done, but didn't have the technology to actually make one. (Dune was first published in 1963) The Army can't do still suits due to weight and the sheer size, remember that they were in essence body suits.
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There was already a reason they are called Meals Refused by Ethiopians...
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It's still not good enough to make coors taste good.
Urine the army now!
Basic filtration is a fairly well-solved technology - campers can buy yuppie-priced water-filters that can turn pond scum into nice clear safe drinking water as long as the problems are bacteria, giardia, dirt, etc. rather than soluble chemicals, and they help on some of the chemicals as well. They won't fix overdoses of salt, or heavy metals, and most of them won't help much with nasty organics like pesticides, but they can solve most of the world's basic safe drinking water needs in places that have dirty fresh water. The issue is making them in appropriate quantities and price ranges.
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So... why not give every soldier a really good filter that both filters out urea and can be reused?
Of course, the army is not necessarily known for trying to find low-cost solutions...
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Could you explain this "tooth to tail ratio"?
Sure. The tooth is the part that bites, and the tail is the part that drags behind. The tooth of a military force is the combat force, the actual fighting soldiers and their equipment. They're the people who actually push the enemy around and force the conclusion of the conflict. The logistical tail is the rest of the force, which exists to support the tooth and make sure it has everything it needs to fight effectively. Modern, mechanized military forces require incredible amounts of support. Ammunition, fuel, food, spare parts, intelligence, mail, etc., it takes a lot to keep them fully supplied, but they're also very fast and very hard-hitting when they're well-supplied.
However, while the tail is so crucial to the effectiveness of the tooth, it's also a liability itself. If the tooth is concentrated on taking the fight to the enemy, it can't focus on protecting the tail, which may leave the tail vulnerable to attack. Successful attacks on the supply lines leave the combat soldiers without supplies, dramatically reducing their effectiveness. The longer the tail, the easier it is to cut. Also, while well-supplied modern forces are highly mobile, the logistics chain is not, and the larger the tail, the more sluggishly it moves. This leads to situations where the combat forces can easily outrun their own supplies, effectively cutting themselves off. Last, all of the people and equipment who make up the tail cost just about as much money as the combat forces, but don't directly contribute to shoving the enemy around. The tail appears to offer no "bang" but costs a lot of bucks so for a given budget, a combat force that requires a smaller logistical tail is a larger, more powerful force.
The tooth to tail ratio, then, is a measure of how much of the force is dedicated to fighting vs support.
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The US heaters are a pouch about the size of the entree pouch, but with less volume. A small amount of water initiates an exothermic reaction that gives off Hydrogen Gas as a byproduct.
By inserting the open end of the heater pouch into a properly-sized carton (the entree pouch comes in one), the gas has no escape, and voila! Heater bomb. Fun stuff.
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As every backpacker knows, lightweight, portable water filters have long been available.
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Here is selection
Whether these could be used under combat conditions is another question.
The thing that comes to mind is what happens if/when the membrane breaks. If someone is using dirty swamp water you get giardia stew. It wouldn't even take a large hole, it could be something small enough that folks wouldn't notice it.
So, what're the membranes made of and what kind of damage can they face?
Only a matter of time before soldiers are issued stillsuits. :)
The problem with a separate water filter is that you need some means to force the water through the filter. (The stuff you don't want is too big to get through).
A typical standalone filter uses gravity, and it very, very slow. (note that the typical crappy 'water filters' desinged for tap water don't cut it for swamp water).
Practical reverse osmosis filters use pumps to generate a pressure difference to make the thing work in sensible time. That's a power requirement, and more weight.
The trick that's being used here is to use something that's dessicant to pull the water through. Normally, not that useful, but when you eat the dessicant afterwords, that's a net gain of water.
In other words, it's the dried food that pulls the water through. This is a robust, lightweight and fast solution.
The other clever part is to ensure that once the re-hydrated food is eaten, it's going to be water neutral, or better. Some foods require more water than other to digest, and that should be a design plan. Still, even if not, if it doubles the length of time a canteen lasts, that's a huge bonus.