China is slowly changing its energy mix from coal fuel to natural gas, but researchers from Princeton University in the US say using coal-based synthetic gas, known as SNG, would increase carbon emissions and water demand.

The researchers’ investigations into the environmental impacts of a shift managed by 2020 suggest the move would generally benefit China’s air, carbon and water, provided instances of methane leakage can be controlled.

Dr Yue Qin, first author of the study and postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, said that “assessing air quality, carbon emissions, and water scarcity impact is crucial to capturing potential co-benefits while avoiding unintended consequences”.

The study’s principle investigator, professor Denise Mauzerall, said that while the paper focuses on China, “its general conclusions are widely applicable”.

China accounts for more than half of global coal consumption, and natural gas makes up only 6 percent of the country’s primary energy use. By comparison, the global average proportion of natural gas consumption is 16 percent.

Aside from using coal-based synthetic gas, the researchers conclude that replacing coal with natural gas can substantially cut CO₂ emissions as well as water use.

“Ultimately, a full transition away from carbon-based fuels will be necessary to address climate change. In other research we have found that renewable energy provides the largest co-benefits for air quality, carbon mitigation, and reduced water consumption of any known energy sources,” professor Mauzerall said.

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The device, unveiled as a ‘concentrator’ of wave energy by researchers in China and the US, focuses wave momentum in a small, shallow area without reflecting the energy back into a body of open water. As a result, the energy can then be harnessed as a power source.

The international team of researchers behind the device includes Huanyang Chen of China’s Xiamen University and Zhenyu Wang of Zhejiang University.

“Our ultimate goal is surely a real application near the seashore and to combine them to electricity engineering, and so on. But it needs more collaborations,” said Chen.

By building a ring-shaped structure with a central open region from which 50 vertical metal sheets extend outwards, the design creates allows a shallow-water wave to pass through the sheets with minimum reflection, preserving the energy created. The sloped floor of the device meanwhile means water depth gradually decreases towards the centre.

The device has been tested through multiple design calculations using simulations as well as physical demonstrations. Combining two waves of different wavelengths is shown to triple the total amplitude. The team plans to use the concentrator as a prototype for harvesting economically viable ocean-wave energy.

A large-scale demonstration of the device is due to take place in the Chinese city of Xiamen, and the researchers say they expect wave energy could be added to solar, wind and hydroelectric energy in the renewables mix.

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Majik Water aims to serve rural and urban populations, mainly in Kenya, where increasing water scarcity poses a serious threat to communities. The device utilises hydrophilic materials to adsorb water from the atmosphere which, when subjected to heat and filtration, produces a plentiful supply of clean drinking water. With a target selling price of 1 cent per litre, it can be used to serve communities in the lowest income bracket.

“Where we’re operating, the air is lacking in humidity. To design for that we use desiccants – water loving materials. The best place you’d find those is if you buy a new pair of shoes or a bag, and there’s a tiny packet of clear balls,” Anastasia Kaschenko, Majik Water’s CTO, told The Source.

“That’s silica, and a variation of that is the exact desiccant we use in our prototyping now. The reason we use that is because it’s abundantly available, it’s cheap and it’s non-toxic.”

Kaschenko believes democratisation of water is key to the Majik Water project and has the potential to rid the Kenyan water market of illegal actors who exploit scarcity by selling untested water.

“There are informal players, such as the water mafia and resellers. Individuals or groups that are selling supposedly clean drinking water, but this water is both untested and the quality is unverified.”

The trio met in Silicon Valley in August 2017 during an entrepreneurial programme, which tasked participants with conceiving an idea that could impact one billion people in 10 years. Beth Koigi, its CEO, had been running a successful Kenyan water filtration company for five years before but faced challenges due to decreasing water tables.

“Filtration becomes irrelevant when there isn’t anything to filter. That was at the front of her mind when she came to California. She’d heard my team at the time was working on dew harvesting, and so she approached me and asked if it was possible in dry and very arid areas,” said Kaschenko.

“That was how we started looking into that technology and that space. We are three women, from three different continents, in a place none of us had been prior to meeting.”

Although Majik Water is still in its prototyping stage in Kenya, the company has international ambitions and is aiming to serve 70,000 people each day by 2022. If their target is met, the entrepreneurs will consider widening their reach to East Africa, although Kaschenko said the product has garnered global interest.

“We’ve actually received interest from places like Qatar, South Africa and southern India where understandably it is quite dry as well. We’re very open to that and that’s in our long-term plan for sure.”

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Demand for energy-efficient water heaters is strengthening and solar power is proving uniquely capable of generating clean energy at low cost. The research group predicts growth in the market for solar water heaters will result from these factors as well as a growing awareness of the benefits to energy conservation.

The market for residential installations of solar water heaters was estimated to be worth US$777.2 million in 2016 and is projected to reach US$1.6 billion within the next seven years. This segment of the market includes large and small homes, township properties, and gated communities and households.

One example of the technology is the Evacuated Tube Collector, a device that converts and transfers energy from the sun to power solar water heating systems. It can be used for domestic and commercial hot water heating, pool heating, space heating and air conditioning. Around 773.3 thousand units of the model were sold in 2016. The research firm says further growth of the market within the predicted time frame will depend on economical pricing, improved capacity and greater efficiency.

Another device, known as the Flat Plate Collector, was found to occupy a 30 percent market share of global revenue in 2016. The rate of adoption of these devices, together with their relative low manufacturing costs, puts it on track for sustained growth over the coming decade.

Strict regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions applied in the US and UK are also projected to further boost business by 2025. However, the firm argues Asia Pacific is likely to lead the global industry in terms of revenue throughout the coming seven year period. It argues high growth rates among countries, especially China, will impel large-scale investments in the region for the purpose of research and development, resulting in exponential market growth.

Other key findings from the report include:

• The market for solar water heaters in the US see a compound annual growth rate of 3.5 percent by 2025, based on supportive government regulations and financial benefits offered by business owners.
• Volume of units sold in the UK could reach 126,200 by 2025, the largest share of buyers being residential consumers.
• India’s solar water heater market is predicted to achieve a value of US$218.1 million within the given timeframe. India is one of the biggest potential markets due to large-scale initiatives by the government reduce fossil fuel emissions and switch to renewable sources of energy

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Developed by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory as part of the US Department of Energy, the system could add the treatment of wastewater to the circular economy using what is known as hydrothermal processing. This processing method combines temperature, pressure and water to convert organic matter into forms of energy normally extracted through intense geological drilling techniques.

The system has been tested with more than 100 materials that include wastewater solids, food processing wastes, brewery wastes, animal wastes, and algae.

James Oyler, president of Genifuel, said hydrothermal processing (HTP) mimics the process by which fossil fuels are formed under Earth’s surface, meaning it has the ability to produce resources such as oil and gas in a fraction of the time without using heavy infrastructure or leaving a large carbon footprint.

“Fossil fuels are created when you have geological time and you have organic matter settling down into swamps and shallow lakes. After millions of years it builds up temperature and pressure and of course it’s wet and that starts the conversion into fossil petroleum and natural gas,” he said.

“In HTP the reactions and the products are similar, but we do it in an hour instead of millions of years.”

Oyler added that the fuels created through HTP can be used and mixed as effectively as their natural counterparts. Their production via the method also avoids excess residue, he said, a result typically very expensive to manage. He said the point of the system is not to increase the energy industry’s reliance on fossil fuels but to decrease the need to seek such resources while adding no further greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

Having trialed the system successfully with the help of its sponsor, the Water Research Foundation (WRF), Genifuel will demonstrate the system to delegates at next month’s forum with Oyler as its formal representative.

BlueTech Research convenes investors, water companies, researchers and regulators, and provides information including analysis of emerging water technology markets.

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The company has released bids for end users to adopt the system and has meanwhile requested a demonstration site for the CFRO. It expects the system will help industrial water users minimise desalination waste both more cheaply and efficiently.

Gradiant’s bidding process coincides with a wider move across the water industry to employ sustainable production practices. For example, the new system could provide a cost-effective alternative to expensive evaporation technologies typically used to treat the runoff wastewater created by garment manufacturers.

Last month, the company opened a subsidiary in India (Gradiant India Pvt. Ltd) – a major source of the world’s textile products. It recently signed another project in Asia allowing Hong Kong-based textile firm, Esquel Group, to implement industrial wastewater reuse technology in its operations. The project includes an agreement that Gradiant will supply dehumidifying technologies to help reduce Esquel’s harmful pollutants.

Commenting on the industry’s increased awareness of sustainability regulations, Gradiant India’s managing director, Ravi Selvaraj, said:

“Innovative solutions have gained in popularity as facilities throughout the country seek cost-effective options.”

He added: “We are excited to help solve these issues using Gradiant’s technologies, which reduce the life-cycle cost to treat and recover water for many industries.”

The corporation is currently seeking end users to host the CFRO for a minimum 90-day period.

Firms that bid for adoption of the CFRO must prove themselves eligible based on specific criteria. These include whether a particular firm does in fact require the minimisation or disposal of brine, together with the level of brine concentration for which they require treatment. Other criteria include access to electrical power and available area space to host the system’s infrastructure.

The CFRO is designed to achieve a final brine concentration of up to 250,000 parts per million (or Total Dissolved Solids) while operating at less than 1,000 pounds per square inch of pressure.

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As part of the agreement, Nestlé will lend technical assistance to PARC for the installation of drip irrigation systems, which have been shown to revive crop production in stressed environments. Dr. Yusuf Zafar, Chairman, PARC told the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC) that solar energy could prove an efficient way of fulfilling the country’s power needs. He added however that PARC would focus its efforts on the role of water, 80 percent of which is used in Pakistan for agricultural purposes.

The chairman said that in the past, Pakistan was a country rich in water resources with its huge reservoirs. Now, water resources have started to decline, he said, the reasons for which are largely linked to climate change. He described a dire need to educate stakeholders, including researchers and professionals at farm levels, by promoting and extending the use of irrigation management systems.

A recent study by the Pakistan Counsel of Research on the country’s water resources shows that depletion of groundwater could worsen the water crisis in Pakistan’s major cities. The quality of groundwater meanwhile is threatened with contamination by heavy metals such as copper, nickel and cobalt, which can spread Hepatitis in people living in Pakistan’s urban areas. Nestlé-Pakistan said in a statement that it appreciated PARC’s efforts to adapt the country’s agricultural sector and said that the agreement signed between Nestlé Pakistan and the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council would help farming communities. Both organisations also agreed to enhance cooperation in the future.

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The UN World Water Development Report for 2018 shows that while such large hydropower projects are aimed at securing food sources and providing energy to industries, the results are often underwhelming. “The World Commission on Dams’ country study on India concluded that a century or more of large-scale water development had resulted in major social and ecological impacts, including substantial human displacement, soil erosion and widespread waterlogging while, contrary to stated objectives, achieving only limited food security benefits,” the report states. In 2016, India’s tallest dam, known as the Tehri hydroelectric, was declared virtually empty of usable water after a prolonged nationwide drought.

Its 2.6 billion cubic metre storage capacity was reduced to nearly zero percent of normal capacity which when active, could produce a 1,000 megawatts of electricity. India is the world’s largest extractor of groundwater, followed by the US, China, Iran and Pakistan. Together, these countries account for 67 percent of total global extractions, causing even richly irrigated regions like the basin of the Ganges to experience water stress.

The report adds that large-scale groundwater programmes have been operating in India for decades, though treating flood-prone regions still takes less priority than water-scarce areas. The UN estimates around five billion people could suffer as a result of water scarcity by 2050. Indian NGO Tarun Bharat Sangh, which is led by Rajendra Singh, is credited in the report with supplying water to more than a thousand dry villages in Rajasthan. The NGO has revived five rivers, recharged groundwater and boosted agricultural production by up to 80 percent, the report said.

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Around two billion of the world’s population must resort to drinking undrinkable water while more than 4.5 billion use water that is not safely managed. South Africa’s Cape Town has suffered infrequent rainfall for three years. Hundreds of thousands of its citizens occupy shacks in informal settlements without reliable transport. Cape Town is trying to avoid catastrophe by limiting consumption of water to around 450 million litres per day, though the consequent affects on farmers having to use less water to irrigate their land could lead to inflated food prices. In Asia, the Indonesian capital of Jakarta is gradually losing its supply of potable water while it continues to fend off torrential downpours that have been linked to extreme weather events.

“Climate change is exacerbating natural variability of the water cycle, increasing water stresses that constrain social progress and economic development. Our health, food security, energy sustainability, jobs, cities, and the ecosystems on which all life is based are all being influenced by the way water is being managed in different parts of the world,” the report states. Climate change has led to increasing numbers of hydrometeorological events that move from extremes to either flood or drought.

Around 90 percent of financing for disaster risk mitigation however is directed at emergency response and reconstruction, leaving a shortfall in preparatory measure and resilience. The report adds that: “while US$106 trillion is available through different funds worldwide, only 1.6 percent is invested in infrastructure and even less in initiatives to increase resilience”. “An ambitious global framework is needed to enable public and private sector actors to cost-effectively access, use, and share water and hydromet data. Global and regional solutions can complement country systems since there are interlinked hydrological and climate systems. Such a framework would also make it easier for countries to monitor and report on their progress toward water-related SDGs,” the report concludes.

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Inhabited for 6,000 years, Aqaba sits at the point where Jordan reaches the Red Sea. Its beach resorts are popular for sunbathing and windsurfing, while the Yamanieh coral reef attracts scuba divers from around the world. Booming growth put these magnets at risk.

So to protect the quality of its marine environment and preserve the region’s attractiveness for tourism, the port city has committed to making huge investments into collection and treatment of 61,000 cubic metres per day from sewer and wastewater by 2030.

Aqaba’s resource recovery strategy generates US$4 million in income for the city, maintaining green areas and urban landscapes. Above all, it reduces carbon emission through enhanced operation and energy efficiency, as well as through production of carbon neutral power from solar farms and biogas. Ultimately, the city will recover 100 percent of its energy.

Aqaba was profiled at IWA’s Development Congress in Buenos Aires, among eight cities to illustrate the wastewater challenge and reuse opportunity. It demonstrated how transition to a circular economy is not limited to the “usual suspects” of pioneering cities such as Singapore or Stockholm.

Other cities that recover a significant portion of energy from wastewater include Bangkok (62 percent), Beijing (45 percent), Chennai (77 percent), and Kampala (227,000 Kwh/y).

The ‘zero discharge’ targets are ambitious, and policies must be targeted toward industry and backed by meaningful incentives. The global market for wastewater recycling and reuse should reach US$22.3 billion by 2021. New innovations in technology help open opportunities and make the transition affordable.

“Whilst the necessity of wastewater reuse in water scarce places like Aqaba is apparent,” observes the IWA’s soon to be released The Reuse Opportunity report, “cities everywhere are increasingly taking proactive actions to improve their water security. They are given greater autonomy; decision making is decentralised, and systems are being adapted to local drivers and demands.”

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