#water innovations

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Endangered Species Highlight: The Water Cone Wizard

(inspired by this post)

[gensational]

I am the people I am the storm I am the riot I am the swarm

[wachinyeya]

"An inventor’s ‘pollution sponge’ won a top innovation prize

A British scientist, Jane Pearce, was lauded this week for her work tackling the so-called ‘phosphogeddon’ blighting UK waterways.

Phosphorus is a finite natural resource that’s used in fertiliser, but runoff from farmland combined with phosphate-laden sewage discharges are feeding algal blooms, which smother aquatic life on rivers such as the Wye.

Now the brains behind Somerset-based Rookwood Operations say they’ve come up with a solution: a unique Phosphate Removal Material (PRM), which acts like a sponge and sucks up the chemical from lakes and rivers.

Made entirely from organic materials, the PRM can then be transferred to farmland to feed crops, they say.

Rookwood CEO Jane Pearce (pictured) this week bagged a £75,000 Innovate UK Women in Innovation Award for her invention.  “There are some incredible companies and women doing fantastic things on the winners’ list – to be recognised among them is amazing,” Pearce told Positive News. “We’re really excited for the next year and beyond.”

She added that preliminary, independent trials had shown early promise. Her invention will undergo more extensive testing with a local water company in the coming months, and she hopes to bring it to market in 2026."

[solarpunkbusiness]

17-year-old Zabeer Zarif Akhter earned a coveted spot in The Stockholm Junior Water Prize — an international competition hosted by the Stockholm International Water Institute in Sweden. In the competition, students from ages 15 to 20 are tasked with developing research projects and building inventions that tackle the world’s leading water challenges, including pollution, drought, and water scarcity. 

Akhter’s focus? Contamination. 

In his home country of Bangladesh, a shocking ​​49% of the country’s drinking well water has unsafe limits of carcinogenic arsenic, which can cause skin lesions and cancer in the bladder and the lungs. Climate change has worsened the water contamination crisis, with an uptick in cyclones and torrential monsoons causing devastating floods throughout the country. 

Akhter invented a first-of-its-kind water purification system that uses ultraviolet radiation and plasma sterilization to remove pathogens like E. coli, TC toxins, and Fd bacteriophage from the water. 

Remarkably, the water purifier is made entirely from electronic waste including recycled laptop batteries, damaged circuit boards, abandoned driver motors, and even parts from an old TV.

[kvetch19]

[thefigureresource]

Amagi : Wending Waters, Serene Lotus [Azur Lane] 1/7 scale from APEX coming July 2025.

[kaeyachi]

Happy 5.4 everyone!

now hoyo

where tf is my promised kaeya content

hoyo my baby boy better arrive on my screen within 40 days or else

[acqua-marine]

[yourfuturemachine]

The Jellyfishbot by IADYS is an innovative, fully electric cleaning robot designed to tackle waterway pollution.

[cognitivejustice]

The eGroundwater project

Groundwater is at the centre of water management challenges, supplying 65 per cent of drinking water and 25 per cent for agricultural irrigation in the 27 EU Member States.

The main pressures on groundwater are overexploitation and climate change, particularly in regions experiencing urbanisation and population growth, with groundwater depletion leading to a whole host of negative effects.

Like many parts of Southern Europe, southern Portugal is experiencing drought and a decline in rainfall which has impacted the productivity of the region's agricultural sector, explains Vânia Sousa, environmental researcher at the University of Algarve.

“With the effects of climate change, we don’t expect the drought to ease. We need to work together on new sustainable solutions to help solve regional water scarcity,” she stressed.

The eGroundwater project

Led by environmental scientists from the University of Algarve and supported with climate data such as irrigation forecasts and historical weather patterns, the ‘eGroundwater’ project is a mobile application centred around a collective, citizen-driven approach to ground water management.

The eGroundwater platform aims to give farmers and groundwater users consolidated information on the condition of water supplies and technical specifications while also allowing users to upload and share their own data.

The app incorporates seasonal meteorological forecasts from the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) which are used to anticipate cumulative precipitation in agricultural areas. This helps farmers predict their water quota and optimises the use of water during irrigation season.

Additionally, CMIP6 climate projections from C3S are used to communicate future recharge scenarios and anticipate how climate change can impact groundwater levels. This information is presented to groundwater users during workshops, for feedback and to design pathways for adaptation in line with future groundwater availability.

Paradigm shift in water use and management

Innovations such as the eGroundwater application present a paradigm shift in water use and management, putting the power back into the hands of water users. The approach is proving successful in nearby regions including Morocco, Algeria and Spain.

“One of the most critical issues on groundwater management is data scarcity. Big Data and Enhanced Information Systems (EIS) are key to overcoming this obstacle by providing users and managers useful, precise and sound data and information.”

The platform facilitates water usage simulations, co-building of new management scenarios, setting up of a citizen information system on groundwater availability and dynamics that underpin the eGroundwater solution.

[wachinyeya]

Indian Engineers Tackle Water Shortages with Star Wars Tech in Kerala https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/indian-engineers-tackle-water-shortages-with-star-wars-tech-in-kerala/

When a severe water shortage hit the Indian city of Kozhikode in the state of Kerala, a group of engineers turned to science fiction to keep the taps running.

Like everyone else in the city, engineering student Swapnil Shrivastav received a ration of two buckets of water a day collected from India’s arsenal of small water towers.

It was a ‘watershed’ moment for Shrivastav, who according to the BBC had won a student competition four years earlier on the subject of tackling water scarcity, and armed with a hypothetical template from the original Star Wars films, Shrivastav and two partners set to work harvesting water from the humid air.

“One element of inspiration was from Star Wars where there’s an air-to-water device. I thought why don’t we give it a try? It was more of a curiosity project,” he told the BBC.

According to ‘Wookiepedia’ a ‘moisture vaporator’ is a device used on moisture farms to capture water from a dry planet’s atmosphere, like Tatooine, where protagonist Luke Skywalker grew up.

This fictional device functions according to Star Wars lore by coaxing moisture from the air by means of refrigerated condensers, which generate low-energy ionization fields. Captured water is then pumped or gravity-directed into a storage cistern that adjusts its pH levels. Vaporators are capable of collecting 1.5 liters of water per day.

If science fiction authors could come up with the particulars of such a device, Shrivastav must have felt his had a good chance of succeeding. He and colleagues Govinda Balaji and Venkatesh Raja founded Uravu Labs, a Bangalore-based startup in 2019.

Their initial offering is a machine that converts air to water using a liquid desiccant. Absorbing moisture from the air, sunlight or renewable energy heats the desiccant to around 100°F which releases the captured moisture into a chamber where it’s condensed into drinking water.

The whole process takes 12 hours but can produce a staggering 2,000 liters, or about 500 gallons of drinking-quality water per day. Uravu has since had to adjust course due to the cost of manufacturing and running the machines—it’s just too high for civic use with current materials technology.

“We had to shift to commercial consumption applications as they were ready to pay us and it’s a sustainability driver for them,” Shrivastav explained. This pivot has so far been enough to keep the start-up afloat, and they produce water for 40 different hospitality clients.

Looking ahead, Shrivastav, Raja, and Balaji are planning to investigate whether the desiccant can be made more efficient; can it work at a lower temperature to reduce running costs, or is there another material altogether that might prove more cost-effective?

They’re also looking at running their device attached to data centers in a pilot project that would see them utilize the waste heat coming off the centers to heat the desiccant.

[jrueships]

babygirl please leave the elderly alone

[spock-smokes-weed]

I’m so glad big tech is disregarding the climate crisis and is going full steam ahead with generative AI

I’m so glad all our water is being slurped up by a robot who has a lying and inbreeding problem.