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The world is suffering from the global water crisis. A survey on the access to clean drinking water results that by 2050, one in four people will lack access to clean drinking water.
It is a significant number that needs proper consideration. This all shows how the world is suffering from a water crisis. Availability of clean drinking water is the essential requirement of an individual.
Clean water is the world’s most important resource. The world does not have to have much freshwater. Three-quarters of our earth contains water, but most of it is salty. There is a need to convert this salted water into drinkable water.
The process of conversion of salty water into drinkable water is desalination. The whole process requires a lot of energy and is quite expensive. It means this process would make clean water very costly to produce.
This makes it available to everyone. As the large quantity of fresh water is used for agricultural and industrial purposes, this creates a problem. Unavailability of clean drinking water leads to serious diseases and causes different health problems.
This unavailability of clean drinking water not only facing the problem of supply but also the problem of distribution. That means it is the access that is problematic rather than a shortage. But this is the era of technology. So it is evident that significant products and technologies will be introduced in the near future.
These technologies will help to cope with the world’s water crisis.
Let’s take a glance at some technologies that ultimately change the world’s water for the betterment of human beings.
Global Water Crisis With 7 Technologies
Graphene Filters
As cited above, the world has an abundance of brine covering its surface, which is more than enough to build up a commercial means to clean out the salt to make the water drinkable.
One motivating technology that differs from habitual desalination invents from a group of scientists at Shinshu University in Japan. The team has built up a graphene-coating for filtration membranes. It can work at high flow rates, making the desalination process of seawater more competent.
The desalination process based on the process of reverse osmosis, which uses filters. These filters are conventionally slow-flowing in a relative sense, which confines the productivity of the water.
The graphene-coating build-up by the team recovers the flow rate through the reverse osmosis filters by 1.5-2X. It makes the process more rapid and more proficient. This has a direct connection to decreasing the desalination costs. And it ultimately makes the process more efficient.
The Warka Water tower
This technique is like a strange spacecraft. But it’s an enormous structure that can detain clean drinking water out of thin air. The Tower is 30-feet tall (9.1 meters). It is covered with nylon netting. The netting is of a particular size so that dew forms on it, then leaks down to the base of the tower and collected.
This tower can confine 26 gallons of drinking water per day. This is enough for a small village. This tower fundamentally works on a condition that a large surface area for humidity in the air reduces.
Though it has extensive benefits. It can be made with many types of local materials because the tower is entirely biodegradable. And it can be set up in about a week without requiring any mechanical tools. It cost us about $1,000 per tower.
Chlorine Maker For Decontamination
One of the critical problems in the global water emergency is the absence of fresh water and clean freshwater loss due to contamination. Simple filters can filter out many contagious materials from water.
One of the major problems that cause infection in people around the world is bacteria. Because many diseases creep around in untreated water. Boiling can work to kill the most harmful bacteria. But in many urban areas, chlorine disinfectants are used to keep the water clean for drinking.
Chlorine is a highly proficient disinfectant and destroys disease-causing pathogens. Such pathogens are bacteria, viruses, and protozoans that commonly grow in water supply pool, on the walls of water mains, and in storage tanks.
One technology looking to further influence this purification chemistry is the SE200 Community, Chlorine Maker. The SE200 permits people to purify water using salt and a 12-volt battery.
The relatively tiny device uses the method of electrolysis. This is done by mixing salt and applying an electrical current to the water so chlorine is produced through a chemical reaction, which destroys the destructive bacteria in the water.
A Drinkable Book
Solving the drinkable water crisis is not just a dilemma of technology; it is also a problem of availability, including a lack of access to materials that can clean local water supplies with relief. One technology that is looking to increase availability to filtration ability is a book introduced by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University called The Drinkable Book.
Every page of the book is designed to filter out up to 99% of bacteria from water. It is similar to a book filled with coffee filter paper because each book has sufficient sheets to supply the consumer with clean drinking water for years.
The Desolenator
It uses the typical desalination process. So solar desalination may be one of the most capable ways to level the technology.
This device works to kills 99.9% of water pollutants. It produces nearly 15 liters of freshwater per day. It is not practically sufficient for agricultural use because it can provide a family with potable water. The device works off of solar energy. It can remain up to 20 years. It comes in at a cost of about $774 per unit.
The device uses the sun in two important ways. It uses solar power to force the traditional desalination process; it uses solar heat and electrical energy together for sanitization. The device heats the water to condense it, but in a very energy sufficient way. There are batteries on-site to accumulate surplus solar energy. If the water supply is not sufficient, then hot water tanks store excess thermal energy.
The Orbital Shower System
The orbital shower system is another technology to help people in areas weighed down with water unavailability. For bathing and cleanliness, greywater is necessary. So a Swedish company, Orbital Systems has built up the Orbital Shower.
It gathers used shower water after use and recleans it. The cleaned water is then used through the showerhead again. It creates a near-perfect system without a shortage of water. The process saves 90% of water usage when showering, which can dramatically blow areas that face water shortage.
The LifeStraw
This is the last technology and has a lot of importance. It is beneficial for providing filtration technologies for potable water. As already mentioned, part of the problem with the global water crisis is not the only unavailability of water, it is the unavailability of non-polluted water. This technology can help a lot.
The LifeStraw is a moveable drinking straw that permits the consumer to only place it into contaminated water, taste it, and then routinely filter through the powerful filter within the straw. Each straw can cleanse a minimum of 1,000 liters of water. It kills 99.9% of the bacteria in the water, like other filtration technologies stated above.
