Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink?

We have a serious water supply problem. 

• Inadequate access to safe drinking water for about 884 million people^[7]
• Inadequate access to water for sanitation and waste disposal for 2.5 billion people^[8]

...According to the World Bank, 88 percent of all diseases are caused by unsafe drinking water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene.^[11]

Water itself is literally everywhere.

...where there are no lakes, rivers or groundwater, considerable quantities of water are stored in the air. In the Negev desert in Israel, for example, annual average relative air humidity is 64 percent - in every cubic meter of air there are 11.5 milliliters of water.

The problem is merely one of usuable water.  But there's a lot of progress being made on this front...lets check in with a few.  First up, a new technology - removing water literally from thin air.

"The process we have developed is based exclusively on renewable energy sources such as thermal solar collectors and photovoltaic cells, which makes this method completely energy-autonomous. It will therefore function in regions where there is no electrical infrastructure," says Siegfried Egner, head of department at the IGB. The principle of the process is as follows: hygroscopic brine - saline solution which absorbs moisture - runs down a tower-shaped unit and absorbs water from the air. It is then sucked into a tank a few meters off the ground in which a vacuum prevails. Energy from solar collectors heats up the brine, which is diluted by the water it has absorbed.

Because of the vacuum, the boiling point of the liquid is lower than it would be under normal atmospheric pressure. This effect is known from the mountains: as the atmospheric pressure there is lower than in the valley, water boils at temperatures distinctly below 100 degrees Celsius. The evaporated, non-saline water is condensed and runs down through a completely filled tube in a controlled manner. The gravity of this water column continuously produces the vacuum and so a vacuum pump is not needed. The reconcentrated brine runs down the tower surface again to absorb moisture from the air.

I wonder if its cost effective.  How about water from Sewage?  I like recycling. 

Earlier in January, for instance, California approved operation of the Advanced Water Purification Facility (AWPF), the largest water reclamation plant in the nation. It will yield 70 million gallons per day of drinkable water from sewage. That's about 10 percent of the district's daily water demand for its 2.3 million residents. Although AWPF's purification process is complex, it produces clean, pure water that meets or exceeds all drinking water standards, the article notes.

Of course theres plenty of water in the Sea, right?

"Desalinating the sea is an expensive, energy-intensive and greenhouse gas emitting way to get water," says Jamie Pittock, Director of WWF's Global Freshwater Programme.

"It may have a place in the world's future freshwater supplies but regions still have cheaper, better and complementary ways to supply water that are less risky to the environment."

Ok, we'll keep working on that one.  How about giving the salt water to the plants?

"We are looking at ways to grow plants on very salty water without damaging soil," Professor Leslie said.  "We're incorporating a reverse osmosis membrane into a sub-surface drip irrigation system."

Lets not forget about making water safe to drink:

Bacteria often get bad press, with those found in water often linked to illness and disease. But researchers at The University of Nottingham are using these tiny organisms alongside the very latest membrane filtration techniques to improve and refine water cleaning technology.

 

These one-celled organisms eat the contaminants present in water -- whether it is being treated prior to industrial use or even for drinking -- in a process called bioremediation.

 

The water is then filtered through porous membranes, which function like a sieve. However, the holes in these sieves are microscopic, and some are so small they can only be seen at the nanoscale. Pore size in these filters can range from ten microns -- ten thousandths of a millimetre -- to one nanometre -- a millionth of a millimetre.

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is like our energy problems, our water problems are solvable.  Water and energy are everywhere.  It will take time, technology, effort and missteps but the water crisis is solvable.  We are in fact making progress:

2 billion people have gained access to a safe water source since 1990. [4] The proportion of people in developing countries with access to safe water is calculated to have improved from 30 percent in 1970^[5] to 71 percent in 1990, 79 percent in 2000 and 84 percent in 2004, parallel with rising population. This trend is projected to continue. [5]

Of course, those advances mean that existing water supplies will get more and more stressed.  Now, we just need to remember not to piss in our pot.

Stay Tuned...