AI-generated summary
Water scarcity is a growing global concern, with over half the world’s population expected to face severe shortages by 2050. Innovative water management technologies such as regeneration, reuse, and desalination are key to addressing this challenge. Water regeneration involves purifying wastewater for uses like industrial and agricultural applications, while water reuse encourages recycling water within buildings and communities to reduce waste. Desalination, though energy-intensive and producing saline byproducts, provides a critical water source in drought-prone regions, supplying about 10% of Spain’s drinking water.
Beyond technology, sustainable water management requires protecting aquifers and wetlands through natural recharge methods. Agricultural practices can minimize water use by favoring rainfed crops, reducing irrigation, and preventing contamination from fertilizers. Legally, prosecuting illegal water extraction and incentivizing biodiversity preservation and nature-based solutions are crucial steps. Farmers are also adopting “stone age innovations” like building small dikes and pond-reservoirs to slow water runoff and enhance soil infiltration.
Inspiration from space technology offers promising advances. NASA’s system for recycling 98% of astronauts’ liquid waste into drinking water demonstrates the potential for cutting-edge solutions that could be adapted for Earth’s water-stressed regions, including Spain. Integrating regulation, natural methods, and innovative technologies is vital for safeguarding water resources for future generations.
NASA is developing a system to recycle 98% of astronauts' liquid waste and produce drinking water. Faced with the challenge of water, technologies such as regeneration or reuse are part of the solution.
Water is one of the scarcest essential resources. As stated in the Innoverse News, more than half of the world’s population will suffer from severe water scarcity by 2050. How can innovation help protect water scarcity? How to take care of this precious resource and not waste it?
Regeneration, reuse, desalination, three water treatment technologies
Water regeneration. Reclaimed water is purified wastewater that receives additional treatment. Its objective is not to make it drinkable but to make it drinkable (as defined by the Catalan Water Agency) Ideal for industrial, municipal, agricultural, and environmental environments, risk or aquifer recharge (discussed later).
Water reuse. Reusing both reclaimed and non-reclaimed water is a basic part of the decalogue of good water use. For example, they are recently being approved municipal ordinances that force new buildings to reuse shower water to refill the toilet cistern. Something that will also save families and the city council some money.
Water desalination. It is a supplement to be used as little as possible, which filters seawater but in return increases its salinity with the brine discharge and consumes significant amounts of energy. It is very interesting in times of drought in which the channels do not give enough volume. One out of every ten litres of drinking water in Spain comes from a desalination plant.
Every drop of water counts: recharge aquifers and wetlands, with stone age technology?
The best drop of water is the one that is not contaminated, the one that does not need to be used, or the one that falls within the ‘circular economy’ and can be used over and over and over again. To revert the state of groundwater from a state of overexploitation to a state where it can be recharged naturally.
And there are several ways to approach the challenge:
- From the point of view of human activity, in agriculture, make use of rainfed crops and avoid massive water extraction, for example, not irrigating olive trees, and avoid using nitrogen or fertilizers (yes, it is possible). And in livestock, reduce and disperse the heads of cattle to Do not pollute underground sources.
- From a legal point of view, the innovation consists of prosecuting water theft, instead of legalizing illegal wells already built; as well as promoting payments for the preservation of biodiversity, included in the CAP with its eco-schemes, and payments for applying nature-based solutions.
- Make use of “stone age innovation“. Increasingly, farmers and ranchers they build small dikes with rocks through their farms, making it easier for water not to move quickly on the surface, and infiltrating the subsoil. And even build pond-reservoirs for irrigation to fill with insect farms, or plants and animals that clean the water.
Learning from space technology
The use of water has many facets, these challenges (and their solutions) have been reflected on at the last meeting of the think tank Future Trends Forum. If creating rocky channels on the planet is a solution to pacify water and make it penetrate the soil, what do you do when you want to conserve water in a place where the concept of ‘soil’ does not exist? Not only because there are no surfaces on which to stand, but because there is no substrate or vegetation.
As heard in the podcast Innoverse News May ’24, NASA is testing a system capable of recycling the 98% of astronauts’ liquid waste to produce drinking water. It is a relevant milestone that opens the door to longer and safer space missions, but also to new technology and innovation to bring back to the only planet we have.
Everything that is learned ‘up there’ will be applied ‘down here’. The history of the transfer of space innovation to life on the planet dates back to the first missions beyond the atmosphere, a space investment that pays off when what was learned there is applied here. In the example, NASA’s water treatment technology could be used for water-stressed countries, which are increasing in number every decade.
Spain, as can be seen on the World Resources Institute map, is one of the countries with the most water stress. It is imperative to use water more wisely, either through regulations that prevent misuse, soil regeneration, or different innovations in the treatment and transport of this precious liquid.
