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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/
Hmm. Brit joke only, methinks.
I'd drink the water.
it gushes from the toilets of Singapore instead of a bubbling spring
That is DISGUSTING. I don't think I will be drinking any water today. And thanks for adding 'gushing'.
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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?
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... has been circulating for years and was likely piss at one time or another anyway, who cares what the filtration system is (ZeeWeed or natural aquifer) so long as one verifies the output is clean water.
I think it was Tom Robbins who postulated that life was invented by water as a means of transporting itself from one place to another?
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
....fish fuck in it
This company plastered incredibly funny billboards all over northeastern pennsylvania to gauge what kind of marketing buzz they'd get from the idea of recycled water.
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.
That's spelled WeeWeed.
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.
That being said, what happens when one process or another fails in this NEWater. Would it be catastrophic, ie Hepatitis or something in bottles? In nature, the process is long enough that a failure or two may not matter. With our potable drinking supply, failure can lead to some bad things - but not on nearly the same level as if it was directly processed wastewater.
I think I'll wait until this has been proven in practice for quite somke time.
If you live near a reservoir, go and look at that. Scum floats on it, fish crap in it, the odd sheep or wading bird dies in it. And then it gets treated and you drink it. What exactly is your problem with what Singapore is doing, people?
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
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
Until the bottled water craze really took off a few years ago, what do you think everyone in the USA and Canada (and half of Europe) was drinking? What comes out of your tap is recycled water in most cases-- just like this.
When I had a paper route as a teenager, one of my customers was the local water treatment plant. They gave me a personal, guided tour. It was pretty cool. Up til then I really hadn't thought much about water purification, and afterwards I just didn't worry about it. They did a great job, and everyone was healthy as could be.
I have no problem drinking water like this. I would have a problem paying bottled water prices for it anywhere besides a third world country.
Nothing but pure grain alcohol for me from now on!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
ZeeWeed is people! Tell everyone!
Well, i'm singaporean and i must admit the locals were a tad squirmish with the whole idea when it started. but then again, singapore's a small country, and a step toward self dependence on essentials like water means greater political bargaining power.
While the UK is lucky in that it always rains...
The climate may be wet, but don't think that there isn't also a great deal of treatment/recycling going on. Legend has it that in central London, the water coming out of the taps has on average passed through seven bodies before it reaches you.
This becomes a particular concern when you think about what people put in their waste water that can't easily be filtered by treatment plants, drugs such as antibiotics or contraceptives, for example.
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Since we've treated the Great Lakes as sewers for a hundred years, Chicagoans are essentially doing the same thing. The water treatment plant here is considered one of the best in the world since its completion in the 1970's.
I would imaging that having a water distiller (there are interesting versions requiring little energy) in the home will be increasingly demanded in the future. pumping drinking water thorugh pipes is a bit much.
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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.
The interesting thing about Singapore is that most of the country's water comes across a bridge from Malaysia. They are in an interesting Military / Strategic dilemma where their dependence on another country for fresh water is a severe national security issue. To be able to recycle waste water and use it for drinking is a huge deal that could lead to aqua independence from Malaysia. If only the US could make gasoline out of CO2!
--------- I have no signature
Actually, in French "toilette" has always meant the same thing; it's English where the word toilet shift meaning to refer to a specific bathroom fixture instead of the original meaning it had when we stole it from the French language.
We didn't steal it. They surrendered it to us.
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IAAAC (I am an analytical chemist) and feel qualified to answer this. When something is "volatile", that means it evaporates readily at normal temperatures and pressures. This works wonderfully for distilling purposes. The idea being, you start heating your initial charge, let everything go to waste until you get to ~100 degrees C, then start collecting only the stuff that comes over at that temperature. Water itself isn't considered a "volatile" substance in this case, since you're probably talking about VOCs, or "Volatile Organic Compounds". These chemicals will burn off well below 100 degrees C and won't be collected in the recovery system.
Hope this helps, lemme know if you have questions.