Tag Archives: water
Oxfam America is promoting a new approach, called "the System of Rice Intensification" or SRI, for small farmers which helps them produce more rice at lower cost without relying on harmful fertilizers and pesticides that can decrease soil fertility and threaten clean air, soil, and water. Farmers using the SRI method simply transplant younger seedlings into un-flooded soils and space them in a square pattern a bit wider than in traditional methods. Soils are kept moist rather than continuously flooded. The plants become more resistant to pests and less fertilizer is required. Farmers in Vietnam who adopted the method increased … Continue Reading
According to Oxfam America, rice farmers could produce 50% more rice using less water than with current techniques. Rice farmers normally rely on flooding their fields to keep seeds covered in water throughout the growing season. But farmers in parts of Africa, Southeast Asia and India have been able to produce as much as 50 percent more rice with less water, and often with less labor, by planting seedlings farther apart, keeping fields moist instead of flooding them, transplanting seedlings to fields earlier and weeding manually. According to Oxfam, water-intensive rice farming accounts for as much as a third of … Continue Reading
Take a look at our new video about the amazing amount of coal and water that it takes to run a coal-fired power station – and the huge volume of carbon dioxide emitted, as well as all of the other pollutants.
IBM has announced a series of projects aimed at making safer drinking water – which is currently not available to some 1.2 billion people. The projects will use IBM’s World Community Grid to provide the computing power for the project. The World Community Grid is the network of 1.5 million computers from 600,000 volunteers around the world which perform computations for scientists when the machines would otherwise be underutilized. Anyone with a PC can join the grid to help with the projects. As well as cleaner water, World Community Grid projects are tackling clean energy, curing diseases and healthy food. … Continue Reading
Researchers led by Jongyoon Han at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a nanotechnology device able to extract salt from seawater, paving the way for small-scale desalination for drought regions and disaster zones. Conventional desalination works by forcing water through a membrane to remove molecules of salt. This process requires a lot of energy and maintenance of the membrane. As a result, conventional desalination plants are big and expensive. The new nanotechnology device works by a process called "ion concentration polarisation". A current of charged ions is passed through an ion-selective membrane. This creates a force which moves charged … Continue Reading
DIME, a company based in the United Arab Emirates, has begun selling a hydrophobic sand for creating an artificial water table which, the company claims, could revolutionize farming in the Middle East and other sandy desert areas. Hydrophobic sand has an extremely thin layer of nanoparticles on each grain which causes it to repel water. In DIME’s case, the nanoparticles are of a substance called "SP-HFS 1609" for which it has obtained an exclusive licence from a German company. A type of hydrophobic sand was sold as a toy in the 1980s; In regions with sandy soil, water is leeched … Continue Reading
Treehugger has published a post which points out that, when all of the factors such as transport and production of the container, are taken into account, it takes 200 litres of water to produce a take-away latté. So, how much water do some of the other "necessities" of modern life consume? A pair of jeans – 6,800 litres A cotton t-shirt – 1,500 litres A hamburger – 4,900 litres A serving of french fries – 22 litres A glass of cola – 38 litres An egg – 454 litres A loaf of bread – 570 litres An apple – 60 … Continue Reading
The 360 Paper Water Bottle has been awarded the InnoVic International Next Big Thing Award for 2009 – a global competition to find and showcase the best new Australian and international innovations. The 360 Paper Water Bottle is a single serve, single use water bottle made from 100% renewable materials, namely paper – specificaly from sustainable paper sheet stock produced from materials such as bamboo and palm leaves. An internal micro-thin film provides the liquid / air barrier and the fusing material to join the two pressed halves together. The botlles are designed to be produced in sheets which would … Continue Reading
Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology in Stuttgart, working in conjunction with the company Logos Innovationen, have developed a way of converting humidity in the air into drinkable water using only solar heat or light. In essence, the process uses hygroscopic brine (a saline soluion that absorbs moisture) to absorb water from the air. Solar thermal concentrators or photovoltaic electricity is used to boil the diluted solution in a tank which is partially evacuated to reduce the boiling point. The water vapour is condensed – producing drinkable distilled water – and the remaining liquid is concentrated … Continue Reading
Researchers Peter H. Gleick and Heather Cooley at the Pacific Institute in California have published research which shows that bottled water requires as much as 2,000 times more energy to produce than tap water. Gleick and Cooley calculated the energy requirements for various stages in bottled water production, including manufacturing the plastic bottles, processing the water and the bottles, and transporting and cooling the final product. Combining the energy for these stages, the analysis finds that producing bottled water requires between 5.6 and 10.2 megajoules of energy per litre of water – up to 2,000 times the energy cost of … Continue Reading
Videos
Renewables News- New Aussie Technology to Clean Polluted WaterScientists from Deakin University, together with French colleagues, say that they have manufactured a lightweight and reusable material that can absorb up to 33 times its weight in a wide range of spilt oils, chemical solvents and dyes, while repelling … Continue Reading → […]
- Aussie Researchers Make Efficient Solar Cells from Low-grade SiliconResearchers at the University of New South Wales have found a way to make very high efficiency solar cells out of cheap, low-grade silicon. It has been known for several decades that hydrogen atoms can be introduced into the atomic … Continue Reading → […]
- First Aussie “Hot Rocks” Power Plant Begins ProducingThe first power plant in Australia to produce electricity using an enhanced geothermal ("hot rocks") system has begun producing electricity in the far north-east of South Australia. The one-megawatt Habanero pilot plant near outback Innamincka is operated by Geodynamics. Geodynamics … Continue Reading → […]
- New Aussie Technology to Clean Polluted Water
