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Would You Drink This Water?
theodp writes "NEWater looks like any other glacier-clear bottled H20. Except, reports Salon, it gushes from the toilets of Singapore instead of a bubbling spring. NEWater is the product of Singapore's new water-treatment system, and it's wastewater that's been purified through advanced synthetic membranes called ZeeWeed, which could help 20% of the world's population that doesn't have easy access to clean water."
Try this FREE article from the Syney Morning Herald. or pay Salon to read it (or Salon will allow you to sit through a commercial and then you get a free one day pass).
http://www.busyweather.com/
Most water we drink today have been recycled from sever/toilet treatment plants anyway. This is nothing more than nonsensical urban FUD.
An H2O molecule is an H2O molecule, is an H2O molecule. If the water is truly purified (A chemical/spectral/whatever analysis can find that out) it really doesn't matter. Should I remind people that the water they drink is pumped from rivers, lakes, and wells where animals (submarine and above ground) piss in it all the time? With a well, nature filters it out using the soil. Other methods require us to perform filtering to clean the water and remove any pollutants we added.
:-)
I'm not even going to go into closed system water recycling...
In other news, does the name mean "NEW Water" or "Any Water"? Both names seem somehow appropriate. Perhaps it was an intentional double-pun?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
NEWater is Reverse Osmosis Water
NEWater is the product from a multiple barrier water reclamation process. The first barrier is the conventional wastewater treatment process whereby the used water is treated to globally recognised standards in the Water Reclamation Plants.
The second barrier is the first stage of the NEWater production process known as Microfiltration (MF). In this process, the treated used water is passed through membranes to filter out and retained on the membrane surface suspended solids, colloidal particles, disease-causing bacteria, some viruses and protozoan cysts. The filtered water that goes through the membrane contains only dissolved salts and organic molecules.
The third barrier or the second stage of the NEWater production process is known as Reverse Osmosis (RO). In RO, a semi-permeable membrane is used. The semi-permeable membrane has very small pores which only allow very small molecules like water molecules to pass through. Consequently, undesirable contaminants such as bacteria, viruses, heavy metals, nitrate, chloride, sulphate, disinfection by-products, aromatic hydrocarbons, pesticides etc, cannot pass through the membrane. Hence, NEWater is RO water and is free from viruses and bacteria and contains very low levels of salts and organic matters.
At this stage, the water is already of a high grade water quality. The fourth barrier or third stage of the NEWater production process really acts as a further safety back-up to the RO. In this stage, ultraviolet or UV disinfection is used to ensure that all organisms are inactivated and the purity of the product water guaranteed.
With the addition of some alkaline chemicals to restore the acid-alkali or pH balance, the NEWater is now ready to be piped off to its wide range of applications.
In fact, RO is a widely recognized and established technology which has been used extensively in many other areas. This includes the production of bottled drinking water and production of ultra-clean water for the wafer fabrication and electronics industry. RO is also becoming increasingly popular as one of the technologies used in desalination of seawater for human consumption. It is also used to recycle used water to drinking water on space shuttles and on International Space Stations.
As a Singaporean, I have personally drank Newater during one of our National Day Parades. It was given out to all the spectators of the parade. There ain't much to the taste, if you ask me to put it to a taste, I'll say it taste rather like distilled water.
Newater is currently pumped back into reserviors from the plants instead of being directly piped for comsumption. It is also currently used industrial purposes in Singapore too.
Out friendly neighbours Malaysia also had a field day making remarks such as "Singaporeans are resorting to drinking their own pee" and stuff as we had some bilateral issues regarding the sale of water from Malaysia to Singapore. This is one of the reasons why Newater technology is developed in Singapore.
You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance.
On a trip to Mars, astronauts will have to drink recycled "grey" water (washing, dishes,...) and recycled "black" water (you guessed it). Recycling will most likely be biological where the organic content is consumed by algae under strong UV illumination. The algae then become part of the food again....
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
I've noticed the same preconceptions people have about rain at various places. For instance, most of the southeast US gets at least 50 inches of rain a year (far more around the Gulf coast...), but it is sunny for much of the year. The northwest coast though generally gets much less rain (outside of a very small line right on the coast) but is generally not very sunny. If you were to ask most people though, they would tell you that it is far more "rainy" in Portland, OR (1029 mm or 40.5 inches) than it is in Memphis, TN (1244 mm or 49 inches) or even New Orleans, LA (1574 mm or 62 inches).
Personally I would have thought that London would have received more rain than Sydney OR Melbourne. To learn that London is actually pretty DRY definitely shatters some preconceptions I had...
one thing to keep in mind is how fast those inches come down. For SW states, most of the rain comes during short severe thunderstorms when maybe several inches can fall in an hour. For northwest, they can have the same inches spread across several days of drizzle.
As a Singaporean i feel compelled to explain why i feel NEWater is important to us.
To understand why the development of NEWater is necessitated you need to know some background about us.
We(Singapore) are tiny(640km Square) and have no natural resources, our water supply is mianly from Malaysia(northen neighbours) and our reservoirs and some from Indonesia(Southern neighbours).
The bulk of water supply agreeements with Malaysia were made just before and after UK left Singapore (no longer colonised).
However in recent history, Politicians in Malaysia (namely Mahathir) have used Singapore as a whipping boy in their domestic elections. They have many a times delared their intent to cut off our water supply(which will lead to war) if we do not "do" as they wish(numerous interference in our domestic issue).
That of course is impossible as we are a sovereign nation in our own right.
This is because of baggage from the past as Singapore was once part of Malaysia before the Brits colonised us. And Malaysia and Singapore were part Malaysian federation for 2 years after the Brits left (We left because we wanted a society built on meritoracy, not based on racial preferences which to this day Malaysia still has - affirmative action for Malays, which forms the MAJORITY of the population in Malaysia, meaning minorities(Chinese, Indians) are discriminated against!!!!).
So somehow, the older generation of leaders there are resentful of the fact that we have separated and have done very well without them for the past 38years.
Hence the need to develop altenative sources of DRINKING water. For our SURVIVAL, Should they go against international law and revoke the water supply contracts.