Water
The Most Basic Human Need
The Hard Truth
Safe and readily available water is important for public health, whether it is used for drinking, domestic use, food production, or recreational purposes. Improved water supply and sanitation and better management of water resources can boost countries’ economic growth and can contribute greatly to poverty reduction.
Water sanitation and purification currently affects over 3.3 billion people. Currently, 2.2 billion people lack access to clean water. Unclean water causes major health concerns and illnesses, usually in undeveloped nations located in Africa, Asia, Central America, and South America. The cost of health care services directly attributable to unclean water can be estimated at US $1.3 trillion per year.
- 785 million people lack even a basic drinking water service, including 144 million people who are dependent on surface water.
- Globally, at least two billion people use a drinking water source contaminated with feces. Many countries worldwide use septic tanks, or merely a big hole in the ground as a sewage reservoir. With lack of sewage hauling service most of this sewage overflows. During monsoon, flooding causing major overflows of these sewage into streets, homes, farmlands and also into water wells.
- Contaminated water can transmit diseases such as diarrhea, cholera, dysentery, typhoid, and polio. Contaminated drinking water is estimated to cause 485,000 diarrheal deaths each year.
- By 2025, half of the world’s population will be living in water-stressed areas.
- In least developed countries, 22 percent of health care facilities have no water service, 21 percent have no sanitation service, and 22 percent have no waste management service.
- 206 million people have access to limited services, or to an improved water source requiring more than 30 minutes to collect the water.
- 435 million people obtain water from unprotected wells and springs.
- 144 million people collect untreated surface water from lakes, ponds, rivers and streams.
(Source: WHO.int)
Clean water is critical to preventing the spread of COVID-19. Immediate action to improve water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) for all is critical to preventing infection and containing its spread. The following statistics will demonstrate why lack of clean water is especially concerning in the context of COVID-19.
- In 2016, one in four health-care facilities throughout the world lacked basic water services, and one in five had no sanitation services.
- In 2017, three billion persons lacked soap and water at home.
- In 2016, 47 percent of schools worldwide lacked handwashing facilities with available soap and water, and 40 percent of health-care facilities were not equipped to practice hand hygiene at points of care.
- In 2017, Central and Southern Asia and Northern Africa registered very high water stress defined as the ratio of fresh water withdrawn to total renewable freshwater resources of more than 70 percent, followed by Western Asia and Eastern Asia, with high water stress of 54 percent and 46 percent, respectively.
(Source: Progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals, Report of the Secretary-General, https://undocs.org/en/E/2020/57)
In these hard-hit countries, water treatment utilizes industrial scale processes that make water acceptable for industrial and institutional uses.
“As for human use, the treatment of water is often left to the individuals to manage for themselves. More often than not, this results in poor or most times no treatment at all.”
Water purification treatment technologies that are widely available for home use are most commonly ion exchange, activated carbon filtration, and reverse osmosis. The water purification removes undesirable chemicals, some biological contaminants, suspended solids, and gases so that the water is safe for use or drinking. The water purification industry has experienced steady growth over the last decade due to increased product selection and availability. However, population growth has increased pollution of fresh water supply along with new home/building construction. The global recession may have slowed construction, but the world population has increased, making it more difficult to keep the maintenance of adequate access to fresh water for global communities.
Over the last decade, most developed or developing countries have established projects worth billions of dollars to treat water for the masses. These projects have an extended timeline from the point of inception to the point of completion. Most often the financing required for such projects is the critical point of failure for these projects, as these countries do not have the budgets or access to funding in the amounts necessary to fund the projects. Even when funding is possible, it takes between three to five years to procure funding, followed by the awarding of contracts taking another two years, followed by the construction of projects ranging from seven to 12 years. As a result, before a single drop of clean water is delivered to the people, it takes from 15 to 18 years. These projects are definitely admirable for their long-term goals. While world politics—from the UN to WHO, World Development Bank to IMF and various NGOs—play their key roles, people have still remained without safe and clean water for decades.
The United Nations has established 17 Sustainable Development Goals, of which Goal 6 is Clean Water and Sanitation. While substantial progress has been made in increasing access to clean drinking water and sanitation, billions of people—mostly in rural areas—still lack these basic services.
Worldwide, one in three people do not have access to safe drinking water, two out of five people do not have a basic hand-washing facility
SCIENCE
Saafh Aqua-O, a Sustainable’s technology of disinfection, mimics nature at its best. Contextually first to lay the foundation, let’s look at the air we breathe. By volume, dry air contains 78.09% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.04% carbon dioxide, and small amounts of other gases. Air also contains a variable amount of water vapor, on average around 1% at sea level and 0.4% over the entire atmosphere. Nature utilizes a variety of “Reactive Oxygen Species” (ROS) and uses specific minerals and metals to aid in the distribution, management, and catalysis of ROS reactions against microbes and organic contaminants.
Saafh Aqua-O advances the disinfection process by transforming what nature does into simple to use liquid formulation. The result is a disinfection technology that has an exponential ability for the management of viruses, bacteria, molds, and biofilm that is multiple times effective that of conventional treatments. It far exceeds peroxides, and it provides a residual protection that conventional chemistries are not capable of. Then the questions asked is How? …simply, we use “Physics to make Chemistry work”.
Benefits – An Environmentally Safe & Effective Alternative
The improvement in oxidation energy is accomplished by a few methods. First, it mimics nature in how oxygen radicals are inter-converted. Second, it does so by how oxygen radicals are managed and last, how oxygen radical reactions are catalyzed. Hence, the generation of a dynamic environment in which a singlet oxygen is the active ingredient and the presence of other minerals and water play subordinate and supporting roles to complete the process.
Saafh Aqua-O is not explosive and does not present a fire hazard because the half-life of a singlet molecule of Oxygen in only 5.3 seconds. Oxygen radicals are an environmental hazard for as long as oxygen radicals thrive, which here, in the environment is just a few seconds. In the case of a spill, what SAAFH AQUA-O comes in contact with, will be sterilized and after the depletion of the oxygen radical, it destructs itself in seconds.
Key advantages of Saafh Aqua-O (SAO) are:
- In comparison to the reactivity of chlorine to pathogen’s, SAO is more than 12 times reactive
- Delivers oxidation energy, which can be controlled and measured by ORP
- Free oxygen radical generation
- Kills pathogens/microbes
- Eliminates biofilm
- Detoxifies organics
- Eliminates or dramatically reduces disinfection by products
- Residual is not toxic: oxygen and mineral monoxides
In Various comparative lab and field tests, Saafh Aqua-O out performed other commonly used chemicals
- Peroxide’s Sodium
- Hypochlorite Peracetic acid
- Peroxyacetic acid
- Quaternary Ammonia
- Isopropyl Alcohol
- K/Na Hydroxide
- Chlorine Dioxide
- Ammonia Chloride
- Calcium Hypochlorite Glycol ether
- Ethyl Alcohol
- Formaldehyde Glutaraldehyde
The Application
AquaGEOLabs.,
has developed various technologically advanced systems to tackle the challenges the world is facing in regards to water.
The scientific advancements in the lab need to be duplicated in real life applications in the field. The Sustainable Tech Design Team took this task head on. Eighty-hour work weeks were normal. Field testing ensued in multiple applications in different market segments with a comprehensive approach for various market segments. With over 2 years of research, both in-house and in the field, the Sustainable Design-Engineering team launched complete Systems with functionalities second to none. Continues improvements are constantly tested and upgrades are implemented on a regular basis.
The table below provides a the description of each unit along with technical specifications. The assumption is most of the units where used may not have continues power supply or in some cases no power at all. Hence the the sole use of solar panels to power the units on a average of 10 hours a day is assumed. If power supply is available, the units can be run 24/7 and the numbers below would be more than double for the output.
The key factor in the engineering of these systems is each of the unit is designed such that they can be modularized and put together depending on the capacity needed. Think Lego blocks. A cluster can be set up based upon need. Below is an example of one cluster designed for a hospital. Solar panels can be installed on the roof or a set-up like seen below to provide shade.
