GLOBAL RESOURCES ANALYSIS


TECHNOLOGIES | WATER TECHNOLOGY


Water shortages are no longer an only Africa and Middle East related issue. China has huge water deficits in both her cities (accelerating demand of household and industries) and in her rural area's (caused by increasing agriculture, industrial and household demand versus stable but polluted supply). Southern Europe has severe water deficits. Some areas of the USA suffer from draughts. Water is the oil of the 21st century and will increase each year more economic value and therefore popularity. The main problem for the Olympic Games in Beijing has 5 characters and is called water. China will close all water consuming industrial activities during the games. Water supply capacities of almost all cities, communities and agricultural area's all over the world have reached their maximum capacity. Beside clean, sweet, fresh water, the waste water situation is becoming more and more also a problem and is very much attached to the clean water use and demand. More water use is more pollution and contamination input of surface waters. The huge demand for fresh water of cities (both by use per citizen and by grow of number of citizens) will lead to new huge water power projects with ditto water reservoirs. Water will be transported more and more from further distances, with ditto increased prices and supply interruption risks. Water reservoirs and water pipelines become more and more attractive for terror action. Societies must prevent terror not by becoming a police state, but just by infrastructural design, not one source and multiple redundancy in sources, pipelines and control and/or management centers. Rain water will gain enormous importance. Collecting, filtering and storing it will become every building will do. Both macro (dam created reservoirs) and micro (roof water of each building). In the greenhouse industry this is already common practice worldwide. Belgium and Germany has both installed legislation that each new building must store its own roof rain water. This demands enormous quantities of collecting, filtering, storage and re-use 'technology' (washing, gardening, cleaning and toilet flushing). The benefit of this micro focused legislation is also that cities/villages (almost all on their waste water top capacity) don't have to install new huge central equipment. The benefit for the building is cheep water and having own water reserves in time of supply interruptions, pollutions/contaminations. The benefit for the direct surrounding of buildings is less mud (flood) risk by heavy rains. Some of these roof water solutions also inject oversupply in the garden soil around the building, to improve ground water levels without wet surfaces. Rural houses and villages will also have their own wells. Virtual water is remote water use by purchasing remote manufactured products or grown material/food. Agriculture will be priced by water consumption. Also local agriculture. Grow|OS (an agricultural greenhouse automation platform) can reduce the water use of growing fresh food severely. This is why Grow|OS also will be used (with artificial light) in the tropical regions. Some led light power will be cheaper than huge water lost by evaporation in the open field. CSP (Concentrated Solar Power) and TP (Thermal Power) installations could also produce water as side product, which could be transported by mega tankers to the seaside cities of the world. Offshore (near coastal area's) there are huge under sea soil sweet water natural reserves. These could be used the same way as ground water is used (using till is away). Water reserves are finite reserves. We need a lot of reality wakeup calls before we will see water as a scarce available commodity. Clean water infrastructures are in most part of the world old and have efficiency rates of just 75% (25% leaks out of the infrastructure, and give the same time infrastructure contaminations a change). Investments in new clean water infra are huge investments for cities. Sewage infrastructures world wide have to small capacities and are old and leaks contaminated water into the clean ground water reserves. The risk of cutting of owns future water supply by this is gigantically. Sewage over capacity dumps by heavy rain polluted all surface water in that region. Micro solutions are here also available and the best solution. A micro sewage system per building is a complete new technology. Water Indus has build the technological designs that can be manufactured in each type of economy (western till primitive). Delivering/guaranteeing clean surface waters, clean soil waters, water recycling. As said earlier: water is the oil of the 21st century. Philips has made the water 'Senseo' for India, cleaning and cooling water in one small device. Water technology is just started.


Author: Gijs Graafland


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