Sound waves used to separate microplastics from laundry wastewater • Hacker News Board

Re: Sound waves used to separate microplastics from laundry wastewater

#31

Post by maxwell » Sun, Dec 15, 2019, 10:10 PM UTC

4ntonius8lock wrote: post #26

jnwatson wrote: post #8

I use a Cora Ball [1] in my laundry for the same purpose. Studies say it is only 26% effective, better than nothing. 1: https://coraball.com/

Thanks for sharing that. I use a lot of polyester garments for sports and feel kinda crumby knowing it really hurts the environment. Hopefully these sound wave systems can be adapted to municipal water systems so as to remove the consumer as the point of failure. Really cool to see the technology that creates Chladni figures being applied to something so useful. Reminds me of how things start off as entertainment man…

> Reminds me of how things start off as entertainment many times, and eventually make a way into an industrial application.

I was just thinking about this phenomenon, in terms of how it runs counter to the criticism of "solutions in search of problems" and projects derided as "toys".

This is a good response to those condemnations: often great ideas work in entertainment first, then industry. The canonical example from antiquity is Heron of Alexandria's automata.

Nowadays, roller coasters seem like a technology that future historians will puzzle over non-utilization beyond entertainment. (The cause of course is zoning, which halted housing and transportation innovation a hundred years ago.)

Re: Sound waves used to separate microplastics from laundry wastewater

#32

Post by jpearson » Sun, Dec 15, 2019, 10:27 PM UTC

4ntonius8lock wrote: post #25

aiphex wrote: post #2

Very cool idea. Probably wouldn't want to do it where there is marine life though.

Even cooler idea; reading articles before commenting. Where in the FA does it talk about using this in the ocean?

The first sentence of the article mentions that the key problem is the microplastics that have reached the ocean. Cutting off one source is valuable, but that will still leave lots of microplastics in the ocean. I don't think aiphex is wrong to comment on the technology's limitations.

Why do you think that the inability to solve a related problem (microplastics in laundry wastewater vs in the ocean) with the same technique is too far off topic?

Re: Sound waves used to separate microplastics from laundry wastewater

#33

Post by chockablock » Sun, Dec 15, 2019, 11:05 PM UTC

jnwatson wrote: post #8

I use a Cora Ball [1] in my laundry for the same purpose. Studies say it is only 26% effective, better than nothing. 1: https://coraball.com/

The full text of the study that Cora Ball cites is available at the lead author's website: https://rochmanlab.files.wordpress.com/2019/01/mcilwraith-et...

From the paper:

> We observed no significant reduction of microfibers by weight with the Cora Ball compared to the control.

Check out figures 2, 3 and 4.

It turns out that the cited 26% number is only for the number of fibers removed. Oddly, in the same experiments, there was no significant decrease in the mass of microfibers, or the length of the remaining fibers when using the Cora ball (but there was a > 80% decrease in both number and mass of fibers when using a product that actually filters lint out of the wastewater.

My read of this study is the the 26% number may not be reliable. The reported p-value was near 0.05, which means it would not be too surprising if the difference between Cora Ball and control was due to expected experimental variation.

Re: Sound waves used to separate microplastics from laundry wastewater

#34

Post by noninoy » Sun, Dec 15, 2019, 11:12 PM UTC

krallja wrote: post #5

aiphex wrote: post #2

Very cool idea. Probably wouldn't want to do it where there is marine life though.

Generally, there is not marine life in the drain line of a washing machine.

washing machine waste water goes to rivers, rivers go to oceans

Re: Sound waves used to separate microplastics from laundry wastewater

#35

Post by manicdee » Sun, Dec 15, 2019, 11:32 PM UTC

skyyler wrote: post #12

makerofspoons wrote: post #10

Or we could stop making clothes out of materials that shed microplastics. And while we're at it, cotton too for the vast amounts of water it uses. Industrial hemp and linen are far more sustainable options. Tencel looks like a great replacement for cotton and uses wood cellulose.

Cotton is softer than hemp and it's lighter than hemp. And unlike either of them, cotton is slightly elastic. If you've ever had linen sheets you know that they get softer and looser over time. There are companies that specialise in making clothing out of flax, but a quick look at their designs showcase just how bad linen is for clothing. The only linen garments that resemble the cut / silhouette of their standard co…

I don’t care about technical qualities, for me I find hemp cloth to be far more comfortable to wear. Softer on the skin, longer wearing, easier to wash and iron.

I go out of my way to get hemp clothing, especially when the options are cotton/plastic blends.

Re: Sound waves used to separate microplastics from laundry wastewater

#36

Post by spodek » Sun, Dec 15, 2019, 11:44 PM UTC

nitrogen wrote: post #15

spodek wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or we could stop making plastic. Or at least the 90% of it making junk. Even if we separate it, it still exists, as does basically all the plastic we've ever produced. Even separated, at the rate we're producing it, wherever we put it will overflow.

wherever we put it will overflow. The scarcity of landfill space is a myth sparked by the infamous "garbage barge", which nobody accepted because it came from the NY mafia and was getting too much attention, not because there was no room for it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobro_4000 This Planet Money episode is a good listen: https://www.npr.org/2019/07/09/739893511/episode-925-a-mob-b...

If only it all made it to landfills, but the most polluted spots on Earth include south sea islands thousands of miles from population centers, ocean gyres, and so on.

Once you make something unhealthy, to suggest that (leaky) places to put some of them are abundant misses the point. They're unhealthy and the overwhelming majority unnecessary.

Re: Sound waves used to separate microplastics from laundry wastewater

#37

Post by brian-armstrong » Mon, Dec 16, 2019, 12:22 AM UTC

spodek wrote: post #13

makerofspoons wrote: post #10

Or we could stop making clothes out of materials that shed microplastics. And while we're at it, cotton too for the vast amounts of water it uses. Industrial hemp and linen are far more sustainable options. Tencel looks like a great replacement for cotton and uses wood cellulose.

Or we could stop making plastic. Or at least the 90% of it making junk. Even if we separate it, it still exists, as does basically all the plastic we've ever produced. Even separated, at the rate we're producing it, wherever we put it will overflow.

Or we can chill out, enjoy the time we have left here and let nature take its course. There is no promise from nature that humanity need exist, nor that it need keep existing. Yes we can add 10% to our lifespan by getting ourselves all worked up over microplastics and climate change but the universe still wins in the long run.

Re: Sound waves used to separate microplastics from laundry wastewater

#38

Post by dang » Mon, Dec 16, 2019, 12:25 AM UTC

4ntonius8lock wrote: post #25

aiphex wrote: post #2

Very cool idea. Probably wouldn't want to do it where there is marine life though.

Even cooler idea; reading articles before commenting. Where in the FA does it talk about using this in the ocean?

Please don't be a jerk on HN, no matter how right you are about an article.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Sound waves used to separate microplastics from laundry wastewater

#39

Post by wongarsu » Mon, Dec 16, 2019, 12:31 AM UTC

spodek wrote: post #13

makerofspoons wrote: post #10

Or we could stop making clothes out of materials that shed microplastics. And while we're at it, cotton too for the vast amounts of water it uses. Industrial hemp and linen are far more sustainable options. Tencel looks like a great replacement for cotton and uses wood cellulose.

Or we could stop making plastic. Or at least the 90% of it making junk. Even if we separate it, it still exists, as does basically all the plastic we've ever produced. Even separated, at the rate we're producing it, wherever we put it will overflow.

In Europe (yes, generalizing an entire continent) we generally avoid landfills and instead burn anything nontoxic that doesn't go to recycling. It's a great way to produce electricity and have all produced gases in one place where you can filter them. Plastic burns just fine. Obviously we try to recycle it first, but a lot of it still ends up burned. The ash that's left over is used in construction, but plastic doesn't even leave ash.

Re: Sound waves used to separate microplastics from laundry wastewater

#40

Post by brianpan » Mon, Dec 16, 2019, 12:32 AM UTC

seriesf wrote: post #18

I've never owned a polyester garment that could be washed in water. Aren't they all dry-clean only? Blends (like denim) I can see but in general it seems like people just wash their clothes too often and use the machine too much instead of hand-washing.

I'm no expert but it seems highly likely to me that you have owned polyester. Do you own socks? Jeans or shirts? A jacket? A throw blanket? So many things are poly blends or have polyester components. Unless you are explicitly checking every label, if you are just buying clothes, you are buying polyester.