We need to start drinking recycled wastewater • Hacker News Board

Re: We need to start drinking recycled wastewater

#41

Post by noir_lord » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 4:31 PM UTC

maratd wrote: post #23

noir_lord wrote: post #6

> finding that while 49% were willing to try recycled wastewater, 13% refused, and the rest weren't sure. This is the end result of an education system that has not prepared people for the modern world, if we engineer a solution that produces water of a purity greater than water from a reservoir and and half of people are still not sure it is safe to drink then we have a massive problem. For the record: I've no issue…

> This is the end result of an education system that has not prepared people for the modern world Not quite. > if we engineer a solution that produces water of a purity greater than water from a reservoir This statement hinges on our ability to accurately measure the purity. This is far from settled and I can understand the hesitation. Personally, I would take a look at the methods of purification. If they're using t…

The UK has some of the best drinking water in the world, my local water company does hundreds of thousands of tests each year of which Example report for my region

http://www.ywonline.co.uk/web/WQZ.nsf/0/26AA27A47E437B1B8025...

Re: We need to start drinking recycled wastewater

#42

Post by funkysquid » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 4:33 PM UTC

Well cities have a somewhat captive market - if they pump it to your house, you'll either use it or pay extra for bottles, and at the least you won't shower or flush your toilet with bottled water.

Re: We need to start drinking recycled wastewater

#43

Post by Cyph0n » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 4:34 PM UTC

tokenadult wrote: post #28

I went to the BBC story kindly submitted here to read it. At the BBC story that opens this thread, I see a linked BBC story "Solving a Space Station's Toilet-Shaped Problem"[1] describing how difficult it has been to do water recycling on the International Space Station, where the extreme cost of transporting more water up into near earth orbit would provide a powerful incentive to develop technology to recycle water…

What do rocket scientists have to do with designing water purification systems?

Re: We need to start drinking recycled wastewater

#44

Post by PretzelPirate » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 4:37 PM UTC

ryan606 wrote: post #38

There would be no shortage of water if it was priced correctly. Instead, nonsensical "water rights" contribute to less-than-optimal uses (like growing rice in the California desert, or water-hogging almond trees) and shortages for those who need it.

Lets not forget the huge amount of water wasted on growing feed for livestock. Its ridiculous how much less water farmers would need if they grew crops from human consumption rather than cows (and yes, some cows craze on open land for food, but that has plenty of other issues associated with it).

Re: We need to start drinking recycled wastewater

#45

Post by tokenadult » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 4:42 PM UTC

Cyph0n wrote: post #43

tokenadult wrote: post #28

I went to the BBC story kindly submitted here to read it. At the BBC story that opens this thread, I see a linked BBC story "Solving a Space Station's Toilet-Shaped Problem"[1] describing how difficult it has been to do water recycling on the International Space Station, where the extreme cost of transporting more water up into near earth orbit would provide a powerful incentive to develop technology to recycle water…

What do rocket scientists have to do with designing water purification systems?

What do rocket scientists have to do with designing water purification systems?

On the assumption that you may not be a native speaker of English, I'll mention that here in the United States, at least, the term "rocket scientist" (which some people who work on the International Space Station project literally are) is a synonym for "very smart person." In other words, my statement is that even though the International Space Station presumably has enough prestige and budget as a project to hire very capable engineers, those engineers have not found it easy to design a toilet-to-tap water treatment system (as the linked article in my first comment reports). Yes, designing a system to work in free fall while confined to the space station is itself a difficult engineering problem, but even here on earth in normal-g conditions, it looks like there is a lot of engineering work still to do on the problem of potable water recycling.

Re: We need to start drinking recycled wastewater

#46

Post by logfromblammo » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 4:43 PM UTC

Cyph0n wrote: post #43

tokenadult wrote: post #28

I went to the BBC story kindly submitted here to read it. At the BBC story that opens this thread, I see a linked BBC story "Solving a Space Station's Toilet-Shaped Problem"[1] describing how difficult it has been to do water recycling on the International Space Station, where the extreme cost of transporting more water up into near earth orbit would provide a powerful incentive to develop technology to recycle water…

What do rocket scientists have to do with designing water purification systems?

They determine the cost of not recycling the water, which is strongly linked to the cost of transporting a kilogram of anything to low Earth orbit.

Re: We need to start drinking recycled wastewater

#47

Post by logfromblammo » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 5:09 PM UTC

ethbro wrote: post #29

JBReefer wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you risk building up pharmaceuticals in the soil around the forest pipes? What a weird world.

I'd imagine (guessing) most pharmaceuticals are fairly short-lived vs biological processes? Otherwise, you'd either only need one pill or it would build up in your body. I suppose it's possible that they're only broken down by human biological processes, but that seems unlikely given the diversity of microbial life in the environment (and inside us!).

Some drugs are not metabolized to a great extent before they exit the body.

For instance, an arctic shaman would eat poisonous mushrooms, taking the hit for the dangerous toxins in the fungus, then other people would drink the shaman's urine, which still contained the active hallucinogenic chemical, and go on a much safer trip. The hallucinogen would persist in this fashion through multiple kidneys before it was no longer worth drinking someone else's piss.

Now imagine that instead of pissing into a cup, you're pissing into a creek, and someone downstream will be taking a lower dose of something that was prescribed to you. That's one of the current problems with just running the wastewater output to the water treatment input. The treatment systems can sterilize and flocculate, but that makes it biologically sterile, not chemically sterile.

It's similar to the difference between distilled water, deionized water, and pure water. There will be some things that your specific purification process does not remove. If you have no outflows, your water system will become like a salt lake, where soluble chemicals enter via the tributaries and are left behind when the water evaporates, thus making the lake saltier and saltier the longer it exists, until it is so salty that otherwise soluble salts precipitate out in certain weather conditions.

Essentially, you would need a desalinator plant between your wastewater plant and the water treatment plant, and those are somewhat more expensive than just diluting your more problematic waste into the whole ocean.

Re: We need to start drinking recycled wastewater

#48

Post by Cyph0n » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 5:11 PM UTC

tokenadult wrote: post #45

Cyph0n wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do rocket scientists have to do with designing water purification systems?

What do rocket scientists have to do with designing water purification systems? On the assumption that you may not be a native speaker of English, I'll mention that here in the United States, at least, the term "rocket scientist" (which some people who work on the International Space Station project literally are) is a synonym for "very smart person." In other words, my statement is that even though the International…

Ah, I misread the context. Thanks for the clarification.

Re: We need to start drinking recycled wastewater

#49

Post by noir_lord » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 5:38 PM UTC

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #17

noir_lord wrote: post #6

> finding that while 49% were willing to try recycled wastewater, 13% refused, and the rest weren't sure. This is the end result of an education system that has not prepared people for the modern world, if we engineer a solution that produces water of a purity greater than water from a reservoir and and half of people are still not sure it is safe to drink then we have a massive problem. For the record: I've no issue…

There are other complexities. For many municipalities, regulation regarding artificial chemicals and dissolved pharmaceuticals is lacking or nonexistent. When you aren't sure of what's safe or not, it's better to be safe than sorry. And if the problem is information, is it the voter's fault for being uninformed or the establishment for insufficient propagation?

Agreed but that a replacement isn't perfect is not sufficient reason not to do it if the replace is better.

If the concern is that municipal water standards are too low to do this then the solution is to push for higher standards.

The pressure on water supply in many regions is only going to get worse and more efficiently recycling waste water can make a significant difference.

Additionally if the standards are so low as to make grey water a risky proposition then they are simply too low generally, water from reservoirs can also be very polluted with things like agricultural run off.

Re: We need to start drinking recycled wastewater

#50

Post by anon4 » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 5:43 PM UTC

ethbro wrote: post #37

jbob2000 wrote: post #7

Sounds like this needs a brand change. "Recycled" kind of implies that there is still something "left behind". Why not call it BluWater or something simple and marketing-like? Follow up with some blah text like "BluWater is the freshest and cleanest water humanity has ever drank! You can get it straight from the taps!"

"Gently used" water

"Purified Beer"