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Global Distribution of Water

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Reducing liquid weight in trash

In the old roll of film I recently developed, I found this seemingly mundane photo I shot in Tokyo.

I was having coffee with my sister at a Starbucks that day. As we were about to leave and throw my ice coffee cup away, she pointed out that I should pour the remaining liquid into the a separate trash can first (shown above). It made immediate sense to me. By taking the liquid out, the trash weighs less, it's easier to take out, it emits less carbon to haul the trash to the landfills. I already pour liquid out from containers before throwing out bottles at home as many of you might as well. So why isn't it more common in commercial environments? All the sodas swishing around in tightly sealed garbage bags probably gets broken by the time it gets compacted on the back of garbage trucks but that water weight gets carried to the dump, wasting fuel. It seems like a good idea that we can quickly implement in this country as well.

Deep Lake Water Cooling System

Deep Lake Water Cooling System: "
(Image source: Enwave Energy Corporation.)

Surely this can be applied here in Chicago, right?

Enwave and the City of Toronto have created an innovative cooling system that brings an alternative to conventional air conditioning to cool Toronto's downtown core — one that is clean, price competitive and energy efficient. A permanent layer of icy-cold (4°C) water 83 meters below the surface of Lake Ontario provides naturally cold water. This water is the renewable source of energy that Enwave's leading-edge technology uses to cool office towers, sports & entertainment complexes and proposed waterfront developments.

The system has been in operation since 2004.

A similar form of air condition is being used in Halifax, Nova Scotia. At Purdy's Wharf, we read here, it ‘provides all the cooling for the building for 10 1/2 of the year. During the remaining six weeks, the buildings use conventional chillers, but the seawater is used to cool the condensers. The system was paid off in two years, and saves the complex more than $100,000 annually in electricity and maintenance costs.’

In the U.S., Cornell University is implementing its own deep lake water cooling system.


(Image source: Enwave Energy Corporation.)

Wikipedia has an entry, of course.

(Via del.icio.us/masoncwhite.)

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(Via Pruned.)

The Hydrological Playground

What a wonderful idea.

[from Pruned]The Hydrological Playground: "

The PlayPump water system works like so:

While children have fun spinning on the PlayPump merry-go-round (1), clean water is pumped (2) from underground (3) into a 2,500-liter tank (4), standing seven meters above the ground.

A simple tap (5) makes it easy for women and children to draw water. Excess water is diverted from the storage tank back down into the borehole (6).

The water storage tank (7) provides a rare opportunity to advertise in outlaying communities. All four sides of the tank are leased as billboards, with two sides for consumer advertising and the other two sides for health and educational messages. The revenue generated by this unique model pays for pump maintenance.

Not surprisingly trying to assess the design and application of the PlayPump system took us on an emotional roller coaster ride. One minute we were giddy with enthusiasm (‘Fucking brilliant!’), but the next minute, completely raving with skepticism (how long do the children have to twirl and twirl around to fill the tank; and is the water any safer?), only to return back to unbridled enthusiasm (well, it's not as if the goal is to provide communities with daily showers, car washes, and indoor toilet flushes; and surely groundwater is reliably safer than the surface water sources to which the PlayPump offers an alternative).

Back and forth.

Convinced how cool the whole thing is, we soon found yet more reasons to doubt the viability of this earnest endeavor: aren't there better options, such as these? Well, of course. The PlayPump isn't meant to be the singular solution for every possible situation. Aggregation is a good strategy.

Counterproductive as we sometimes are with our privileged misanthrope and ironic asides, we asked ourselves: don't you find the ads a bit troubling, even comical? (Advertising in economically depressed areas? Is this like Colors by Benetton or something?) To which we replied: Yes, we are indeed privileged.

Back and so forth.

But before we reverted back to our usual default position of enthusiastic interest, we asked one last question: wouldn't it be better to just give a sizable chunk of what we in the United States spend on public water services -- to recreate, for instance, some sort of Edenic fantasies in the desert Southwest with water diverted from severely depleted sources -- to sub-Saharan African nations where the money will be used to improve their hydrological infrastructure, and we are the ones who get to install the PlayPumps in our school grounds and playgrounds where a growing population of obese, diabetic, allergic children, the ones inured to the hardship of suburban domesticity, are forced to trim a little bit of the fat, reduce susceptibility to diabetes, and prevent future addictions to Allegra® and Claritin® while teaching them about the incredibly, wonderfully awesome subject of hydrology, imparting a life long commitment to water conservation?

Yes.

(All images courtesy of PlayPumps International.)

(Spotted at // world citizen.)

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(Via Pruned.)

World's longest tunnel to make a permanent connection between 2 continents

They just need a tunnel between the Russian mainland, Sakhalin (Saharin) Island and Hokkaido and I can drive home to Tokyo!

[from Spluch] World's longest tunnel to make a permanent connection between 2 continents: "Russia plans to build the world's longest tunnel, a transport and pipeline link under the Bering Strait to Alaska, as part of a $65 billion project to supply the U.S. with oil, natural gas and electricity from Siberia.

A 6,000-kilometer (3,700-mile) transport corridor from Siberia into the U.S. will feed into the tunnel, which at 64 miles (103 km) will be more than twice as long as the underwater section of the Channel Tunnel between the U.K. and France, according to the plan. The tunnel would run in three sections to link the two islands in the Bering Strait between Russia and the U.S.

The planned undersea tunnel would contain a high-speed railway, highway and pipelines, as well as power and fiber-optic cables, according to TKM-World Link.

The project, which Russia is coordinating with the U.S. and Canada, would take 10 to 15 years to complete.

Source: Bloomberg
Tags: Tunnel | Berling Strait | Longest"

(Via Spluch.)