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Vast amounts of valuable energy, agricultural nutrients, and water could potentially be recovered from the world's fast-rising volume of municipal wastewater, according to a new study by UN University's Canadian-based Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH).
[...]Today, the volume of wastewater roughly equals the annual discharge from the Ganges River in India. By the mid-2030s, it will roughly equal the annual volume flowing through the St. Lawrence River, which drains North America's five Great Lakes.
Among major nutrients, 16.6 million metric tonnes of nitrogen are embedded in wastewater produced worldwide annually, together with 3 million metric tonnes of phosphorus and 6.3 million metric tonnes of potassium. Theoretically, full recovery of these nutrients from wastewater could offset 13.4% of global agricultural demand for them.
Beyond the economic gains of recovering these nutrients are critical environmental benefits such as minimizing eutrophication—the phenomenon of excess nutrients in a body of water causing dense plant growth and aquatic animal deaths due to lack of oxygen.
The energy embedded in wastewater, meanwhile, could provide electricity to 158 million households—roughly the number of households in the USA and Mexico combined.
Journal Reference:
Manzoor Qadir et al. Global and regional potential of wastewater as a water, nutrient and energy source$. 27 January 2020, Natural Resources Forum. DOI: 10.1111/1477-8947.12187
The aquatic plants that depend on the effluent could not be reached for comment.
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 04 2020, @01:17AM (7 children)
The very meaning of "life" as a phenomenon, is taking concentrated energy from somewhere and "embedding it in" the surrounding medium in diluted form. Energy is neither created nor destroyed, but still is rendered less usable. Or unusable, when any ready way to harvest it at that dilution would spend more than it harvested.
Thermodynamics is a bitch, and uneducated "green scientists" are a plague.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by anubi on Tuesday February 04 2020, @02:38AM
Yes, thermodynamics is a bitch.
Especially entropy. God rigged the game. We can't win...we can't even break even. It's obvious to me that I am just along for the ride. And to make of it whatever I will.
For me, the study of this is a religious experience. Please don't ask me to pastor...all my study did is to reveal that I did not know jack shit about anything. Entropy is the closest concept I have for the Divine,
So far, it seems I am here for one thing and one thing only...learn how to respect others. Try to make myself useful. Don't be an asshole. Choose love or hate. Compassion or greed. And you will get what you sow.
Yes, off topic as all get out, but I felt led to post it
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 04 2020, @03:10AM (4 children)
Haha you still on about thermodynamics? These self-styled geniuses I tell you hwot!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 04 2020, @03:51AM (3 children)
Irrespective of having an obsession, he is right.
While you are still irrelevant. Consistently so, almost obsessively.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 04 2020, @04:40AM (2 children)
And you think the OP's point has any bearing on the article? Entropy exists, therefore scientists are dumb? Or something else? Please good sir, do explain to this lowly country bumpkin what is going on here!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 04 2020, @05:24AM (1 child)
More like a beering than bearing, but it does have a tangent with sorta evocative potential.
+
=> Fucking shit, mankind, you act as you are dead to let that energy gradient go to waste.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 04 2020, @03:55PM
Well diluted form? I don't think that is accurate, life forms are usually quite compact. They inhabit large areas, so I guess the mathematical density would be low but that is quite misleading.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday February 04 2020, @05:27AM
As spending more than it's harvested will increase the total entropy, I argue that it's the "life" obligation of the humanity to act immediately in harvesting it! (grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford