water

People have wanted to turn sea water into drinking water for years. Unfortunately, it's not cheap.

The reverse osmosis process, which separates out salt with a membrane, costs about 50 cents per cubic meter of water. Reverse osmosis systems also have to be monitored so that the membrane doesn't get fouled or clogged. Last year, Ashkelon in Israel opened a $250 million plant that will ultimately churn out 100 million cubic meters of water annually.

Quos, a stealth company out of Chicago, has come up with a technique for removing the salt and other impurities without membranes, according … Read more

Showering can waste a gallon of water a minute. Yet a daily shower is one of those nonnegotiable, guilty pleasures I'm unwilling to sacrifice.

Still, the number of water-starved regions is only set to grow. For those who must watch every drop, a shower timer could be the next best thing to installing a high-tech, low-flow shower head.

A $3 timer from Envirosax, which makes trendy shopping bags, sticks to a shower wall with a suction cup. Its blue, pink, green, or gray sands take 4 minutes to pass through the hourglass.

Four minutes? Hair conditioner alone takes 2 … Read more

Nuclear power plants have a lot of excess heat, so why not use that heat to make fresh water?

That's the idea of S.S. Verma, with the Department of Physics at the Sont Longowal Institute in Punjab, India. If located offshore near large population centers, the plants could provide cheap electricity as well as fresh water to megacities like Mumbai.

Some companies are already looking at developing desalination platforms that can be attached to nuclear plants, he said, according to the Indo-Asian News Service (via Earthtimes). (Verma's complete paper can be found here.)

The general and very … Read more

It's a water-based molecule that repels water.

That's Hycrete's business in a nutshell, according to CEO David Rosenberg. The company has a molecule--which consists of a water molecule with a long hydrocarbon attached--that links up to metallic ions in whatever it's mixed into. In the right circumstances, the molecule behaves like an oil and pushes water away.

The company currently sells its material to concrete manufacturers and contractors who use it to replace the bound-to-fail plastic membranes employed to keep water out of building foundations and freeway pilings. With Hycrete's molecules mixed into the cement, … Read more

Is there anything more annoying than walking into the kitchen to refill your water glass, only to find that your roommate/child/spouse/co-habitation partner has left the pitcher completely empty? Well, actually that car alarm beeping outside is pretty annoying. And so are all those Colorado Rockies insta-fans. But you get the picture. Whenever you innocently stumble upon an empty water pitcher, before you can get that cool, refreshing goodness you have to fill up the pitcher and wait f-o-r-e-v-e-r while you watch it drip... drip... drip...… Read more

In way of tech conference swag, the LifeStraw is definitely unique.

Matthew Nordan, the president of nanotechnology firm Lux Research, delivered the morning keynote for his company's annual conference earlier this week where he talked about the disruptive potential of materials sciences.

Although he's working with very technical topic, Nordan puts on a good show. There was the nanonickel-covered ping pong ball that he tried unsuccessfully to crush with a hammer.

Then he brought out a bowl of muddy water that he got from a local woodland. This was nasty-looking water with lots of brown things floating in … Read more

Altela says it has a machine that can make it rain. Really.

The Albuquerque, N.M.-based company's AltelaRain System essentially mimics the evaporation-condensation cycle that makes life on earth possible. The system takes bracken, salty water; boils it; creates steam; and the steam is cooled to become purified water. Like in nature, the water gets cleaned because the salts and other materials get separated during the evaporation process. Rain isn't salty, after all, although the droplets originally came from sea water.

The key is that Altela has come up with a way to make the process energy … Read more

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--Society-impacting technological change will increasingly come from physical sciences, such as chemistry, physics and mechanical engineering, rather than information technologies, said Matthew Nordan, the president of nanotechnology research firm Lux Research.

Nordan on Monday provided an overview of nanotechnology at the firm's annual conference here, arguing that material sciences will fuel technological development and economic growth in the coming years in much the way that information sciences did in the last 20 years.

These hard sciences are also critical to addressing the global problems of providing fresh water to billions of people worldwide, as well as energy … Read more

It was inevitable, really. We've seen aquariums of all kind on Crave, including one that can even be controlled via Wi-Fi. So of course we would eventually encounter one from Hello Kitty.

And just so we can always stay near, Tokyomango says the Sanrio empire has generously included a USB connection for this faux tank as well. It makes perfect sense, now that we think about it: first air, then land, now water. The invasion continues unabated.