article published by news.bbc.co.uk June 20, 2003.
Commentary By Joseph Ellsworth CTO of A2WH.COM LLC
© A2WH.COM LLC All Rights Reserved.
The problem described by the “Running out of Water” article
is will within our capability of solving with current technology. All we need is the economic and political
will to implement the solution.
The article talks about the need for changing water policies and
conservation. These are good
but a real solution that uses naturally renewable resources and is immune to
droughts needs to be part of the overall solution. We don’t feel that everybody should
have to scrimp all the time when there is an environmentally positive way to
provide ample water to every one.
There is no need to wait for fusion power to supply power for adequate
water from major distilleries. Most of the areas hit hardest by
water shortages receive over 2,500 megawatts of energy every square mile which equates 23,309,893 KWh
(Kilowatt hours) of energy from the sun every day worth $2.9 million dollars at a $0.12 per KWh
rate. Imagine $2.9 million
dollars worth of free energy every day from the sun from only a single square
mile.
The patent pending A2WH (Air to water harvest) solution can be
used to extract liquid water from the air and it works during the worst
droughts. It has no adverse environmental
impact and takes advantage of the free solar energy resource. It uses mostly the solar thermal heat
energy and can be produced from widely available commodity products. The sun evaporates 2.7 billion gallons of
water from world’s oceans every second so extracting water from air
represents the ultimate renewable resource.
It takes some land and some capital to
make the initial installation but after that the operation cost is very low and
eliminates the water shortage issues and the related risk of water
wars for ever.
The A2WH (Air to water harvest)
technology can produce the 250
billion gallons needed for a major desert city like Las Vegas while using only 250 square miles of land.
In the past extracting liquid water from the air has been very
expensive but with A2WH patent pending solar thermal approach it has become competitive with other
water sources such as Coastal Desalination and due to it’s immunity from
oil prices it will out perform most of these sources over time.
Most importantly it can be installed on land that is undesirable for
other purposes,
It can be installed in smaller chunks which minimizes the needs
for long pipelines and it can not be impacted by industrial contaminants in the
water which are always a risk with desalination.
The problem with coastal refineries is that they require some of the
areas premium real-estate right on the edge of the ocean. As a result of being on the beach, all
the water they produce must be pumped up hill, They consume
large amounts of electricity which will only get more expensive and their
filters can be fouled by industrial chemicals which are found in increasing
concentrations especially in heavily industrialized areas.
The Desalination plants must be installed in large 100 million+ increments
to be cost effective; they have uncertain environmental effects as is
demonstrated in 250 million dollar
A large number of cities are not located adjacent to the ocean where
they can easily access the salt water and even if the could build a pipeline
they would still have a problem disposing of the waste products.
The problem with using nuclear power plants is that the long term cost
is unclear. The problem of spent fuel storage is so extreme
that it is commonly being stored on location in a manner that would never be
approved by EPA for long term storage.
Every state fights nuclear
storage on their land and the time scale involved makes budgets impossible to
predict.
I understand wanting countries to work their own way out of poverty but
it is really hard to pay attention to work when you have children dying of
water related diseases at home.
Lack of safe potable water has a profound impact on the economic production of each family so providing safe potable water is a pre-requisite to allowing economic growth. In India today women are walking up to 5 hours every day for potable water which is costing the family that persons income and is quite often costing their teen age girls the opportunity for education. Women in most cultures have a large impact on forming the world view of their children. This means that if you want to eliminate the poverty cycle and moderate extreme religious beliefs common in modern terrorists then it is critical to educate the women who will influence the beliefs of the next generation. If you want to moderate belief systems it is essential to catch people when they are in their learning teen age years. It is an absolute tragedy both for the girl and for the world when teen age girls miss out on their education just to fetch water.
Another way of looking at the same issue is that the women in many societies are never aware of the opportunities they should have so they allow them selves to be mistreated. The only way to stop this cycle is to educate a sufficient percentage of the women in that culture about their real options so that they can force a change in the local culture. If you can educate a person when they are still in their teenage years it dramatically increased the chance of influencing their world view. This means to change a cultures standard response it requires educating those women when they are children and teens.
Even with wide spread education of the teenage female children change will take time but over the course of several generations the economic and political outlook of entire regions can be changed in favorable ways. This will never happen if these female children spend their formulative years fetching water instead of learning. In some African countries girls start having children at 15 and keep having them until their bodies fail if those same girls can be pre-educated on the effect this will have on their bodies and on how hard it will be when they have a child die during the next famine it may not change the behavior of that girl but it just might cause her to teach her daughters and sons a new world view. The technical means of changing birth rates is available but before these can be effective you have to ensure the willingness of the woman to employ the techniques which requires early education across generations.