Green, Easy and Cheap
The green, easiest, cheapest and newest technology to treat water at Green University
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….1
I. TYPE OF WATER IN NEED FOR TREATMENT AT THE GREEN UNIVERSITY…………………………………………………..……1
A. Swimming Pools …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..……3
B. Water from Mosques……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………3
C. Others……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..……3
II. THE USE OF OSMOSIS IN WATER TREATMENT AT THE GREEN UNIVERSITY…………………………..………..….4
A. Wastewater Treatment……………………………………………………………………………………….…….…..4
B. Concentration of dilute industrial wastewater………………………………………………………………….……….5
The Essay on Water Purification
There are many reasons why we need to treat our water, and there are also many different ways we can treat our water. Water is very important to our survival. Regulations are set so that our water is healthy for us to drink. Without those regulations there could be things in our water to cause us to be sick. Some problems in parts of the country are heavy metals. One of the best ways to see if you ...
C. Desalination of Salty Water………………………….…………………………………………………….…………..6
III. WHY CHOOSING FORWARD OSMOSIS?……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….7
A. Efficiency………………………………………………………………………….……………………………………7
B. Cost……….……………………………………………………………………………………………………………8
CONCLUSIONS………………….…………………………………………………………………………………………………9
WORKS CITED…………………..……………………………………………………………………………………………..…10
APPENDIX………………………………………………………………………………………….………………………………11
TABLE OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Table 1: Where do you believe most of water is wasted?
Fig 1: Waste Water
Fig 2: Forward Osmosis and Reverse Osmosis
Fig 3: Forward Osmosis for Desalination
Introduction
The new trend in modern days is to protect the environment and to preserve the natural resources. Recycling, utilizing green energy resources such as solar, wind and other types of energies, reducing pollutions and others are some of the most important activities that show this trend. When designing the Green University, one of the most important issues is water pollution. One of the methods proposed is desalination but desalination uses fossil fuel for treating water and as a result, the air pollution will increase. It is true that it will solve the water problem but it will create air pollution. As a result, water recycling concepts has been proposed to improve water uses and treatment at the Green University. One of the new technologies that are used for water recycling at the University is called Forward Osmosis. Forward Osmosis is the best solution for recycling water at the Green University because it has high efficiency and low cost
I. TYPE OF WATER IN NEED FOR TREATMENT AT THE GREEN UNIVERSITY
In order to determine the sources of wasted water, a questionnaire has been distributed for 50 students from different levels at KFUPM. The purpose was to known the water that is being used in these areas. The questions of the questionnaire and the number of the rating made by the students are as the following:
The Essay on Water 5
Thesis Statement: Water is the most crucial part of life its self, and must never go unnoticed. I. People frequently overlook the importance of water in the body. In order to keep the body healthy, people must consume water. A healthy body is a well-hydrated body. Without the constant consumption of water the body becomes dehydrated. Perhaps people overlook waters importance, simply because its ...
Table 1: Where do you believe most of water is wasted?
Type | Rate |
Mosques | 17 |
Swimming pools | 16 |
Cafeteria and restaurant | 3 |
Bathroom (bathing) | 12 |
Bathroom (toilet) | 2 |
Source: (Al Mazyed, 2011)
Fig 1: Waste Water
Source: (Al Mazyed, 2011)
According to the answers, a graph representation was used to simplify the results. The highest source of water used according to the answers is the mosques. The second place is the swimming pools and the third one bathing water in the bathrooms. The arrangements of these places according to the answers of students are as the following:
1) Mosques
2) Swimming pools
3) Bathroom (bathing)
4) Cafeteria and restaurant
5) Bathroom (toilet)
Based on these answers, the type of water in need for treatment at the green university will be grouped into three major groups according to the quantity of water used in them. The first one is the water used in mosques. The second one is the swimming pools and finally, the third one is other places which are the cafeteria and restaurant and bathroom (toilet).
(Al Mazyed, 2011)
A. Water from Mosques
After determining those mosques uses the highest quantities of water at KFUPM, the quantities of water should be calculated. The calculation is based on the facts that there about 10,000 students and about 2000 employees, workers and faculty and there are five prayers per day.
B. Swimming Pools
The second place that has large quantities of water is the swimming pools. Each university has at least one swimming pool. For the case of King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM), there are three large Olympic swimming pools that are reserved for the students. The water that is used in the swimming pool is changed every week. Because of that, the amount of water used for swimming pools is large.
C. Others
Finally, the last three types of places that use water are bathing, cafeteria and restaurant and bathroom (toilet).
For the case of the water that is used in cafeteria and restaurant, the amount of water is less compared with water used in mosques and swimming pools. Actually, the difference is very large.
The Essay on In Your Opinion Are Water Resources Over Or Undervalued In The United States
In your opinion are water resources over or undervalued in the United States? Water is the most important life element to humans after oxygen. Without water human can live only up to 3 days after which they would die. Today water represents a great and profitable industry for the fact that the producers of the main US soft drinks need water, as well as the ordinary citizen who use water for their ...
II. THE USE OF OSMOSIS IN WATER TREATMENT AT THE GREEN UNIVERSITY
In order to fully understand the forward osmosis technique, it should be explained from two sides. The first is the similarities and differences between osmosis and forward osmosis. This means that the osmosis phenomenon should be explained. The second one is to explain how it is used in wastewater treatment and desalination.
A. Wastewater Treatment
There are two e main resources of water. The first one is the natural resources such as rain, rivers, lakes and underground water. The second one is the water produced from desalination. All of these types of water are used for many different applications such as human, agricultural and industrial applications. The concept of wastewater treatment has become one of the best options because of the limited freshwater resources and because desalination cost lots of money.
There are many technologies that can be used for wastewater treatment. One of these technologies is forward osmosis. This technology can be used at the Green University for recycling the used water which has been described in the previous section. Forward osmosis consists of three main components. The first one is the containers of the water. The second one is the membrane that will separate the polluted water and the clean water and the last one is the chemical materials used and in this case, these chemicals are carbon dioxide and ammonia (Forward Osmosis, 2010).
Figure 2 illustrates the difference between forward osmosis (FO) and reverse osmosis (RO) (Forward Osmosis, 2010).
From the figure, it is clear that reverse osmosis needs force to move the water through the membrane from one place to another while forward osmosis does not need any force (Forward Osmosis, 2010).
The Review on The Methods, Applications, Benefits and Drawbacks of Desalination Technology to Wastewater Treatment
Abstract: Water is crucial in our daily lives for consumption, industry and agricultural purposes. Many parts of the world, particularly in developing countries, do not have access to clean water. This is due to the lack of importance in providing clean water as well as lack in funds and other reasons. A method that produces clean water from wastewater, seawater or brackish water is desalination ...
Fig 2: Forward Osmosis and Reverse Osmosis
Source: (Forward Osmosis, 2010)
The used water consists of many types of pollution such as biological pollution and chemical pollution. Both of these types of pollutants can be removed from water by using forward osmosis (Cath, 2006).
Therefore, treating polluted water discussed in the previous part can be accomplished by using forward osmosis.
B. Concentration of Dilute Industrial Wastewater
Osmosis is not a newly discovered technique. It has been used long time ago when people sprinkle salt on meat to preserve it (Cath, 2006).
The salt absorbs humidity and water from the meat and that leaves no water for bacteria to grow (Cath, 2006).
According to Tzahi Cath who has specialized in osmosis said that osmosis can be defined as “the net movement of water across a selectively permeable membrane driven by a difference in osmotic pressure across the membrane.” The new development of osmosis is the use of certain arrangements to make what is known by forward osmosis. To create a concentration of dilute liquid, ammonia and carbon dioxide is used to crease differences in pressure at the two sides of the membrane. The water that needs to be treated is put in a container and the other container contains a solution composed of carbon dioxide and ammonia to increase its concentration (Yale to Build Novel, 2006).
The two liquids are separated by a membrane (Forward Osmosis, 2010).
What happens is that the water moves from the low concentration to the higher concentration and the membrane rejects the pollutants from passing (Yale to Build Novel, 2006).
After the water is moved from the polluted water to the solution that contains the ammonia and carbon dioxide, the solution is subjected to high temperature (Cath, 2006).
The purpose of that is because the two chemical materials turn into vapor and what is left is the clean water that can be used again (Yale to Build Novel, 2006).
C. Desalination of Salty Water
Forward osmosis can also be used for water desalination. Ordinary desalination techniques consist of two main types: thermal desalination and osmosis desalination. The first one depends on separating water from salt on the concept of boiling sea water to evaporation and then condensing clean water without the salt (Forward Osmosis, 2010).
The Essay on Determining the Rate of Osmosis with Water and Sucrose
Determining the Rate of Osmosis with Water and Sucrose 10/3/2012 Determining the Rate of Osmosis with Water and Sucrose Author: Results: Bag 1 had a rate of osmosis equal to 0. 01 grams per minute. Bag 2 had a rate of osmosis equal to 0. 0543 grams per minute. Bag 3 had a rate of osmosis equal to 0. 0471 grams per minute. Bag 4 had a rate of osmosis equal to 0. 0886 grams per minute. Bag 5 had a ...
The osmosis desalination depends on separating sea water from salt by passing the water alone through the membrane (Forward Osmosis, 2010).
Both of these desalination technologies have drawbacks. The developments made for forward osmosis by Yale University combined the two desalination technologies together. Like the osmosis, forward osmosis uses a membrane to separate sea water from salt and from the thermal desalination, forward osmosis uses temperature to separate clean water from ammonia and carbon dioxide (Yale to Build Novel, 2006).
The forward osmosis for desalination is shown in Figure 3.
Fig 3: Forward Osmosis for Desalination
Source: (Yale to Build Novel, 2006)
III. WHY CHOOSING FORWARD OSMOSIS?
After explaining the forward osmosis and how it is used for wastewater treatment and desalination, the most important question is answered in this part. The question is why should the Green University use forward osmosis instead of other technologies should?
A. Efficiency
Forward osmosis is the evolution of many types of technologies that are used for wastewater treatment or for desalination. The efficiency of this technology is very high because of many reasons. Actually, the efficiency of using forward osmosis is more than 83 percent more than other technologies (Yale to Build Novel, 2006).
The first reasons for this high efficiency are because it needs less energy and fewer complications (Yale to Build Novel, 2006).
Since the energy used is less, the emission of greenhouse gases will be low and as a result of that, this method is friendly to the environment. According to Next Big Future magazine said that “the fuel consumption and carbon emissions will be lower than those of almost any other water source besides a local lake or aquifer” (Forward Osmosis, 2010).
The Essay on Osmosis Lab Distilled Water
Objective Determine the relationship between concentration of solution and osmosis Protocol Materials: six 30 ml dialysis tubes, clamps, tube holders, 250 ml beakers, distilled water, sucrose in 0. 2 M, 0. 4 M, 0. 6 M, 0. 8 M, 1. 0 M concentrations, electronic balance Six 30 ml dialysis tubes were obtained. The bottoms of the bags were clamped to create bags. Twenty-five ml of each of the ...
B. Cost
In addition, forward osmosis should be used at the Green University because it costs less than other methods. When using forward osmosis for desalination, it needs one-tenth the energy needed by other desalination technologies for producing the same amount of water (Forward Osmosis, 2010).
Moreover, the carbon dioxide and ammonia that are used for concentration are condensed and reused again and again (Forward Osmosis, 2010).
They will not be released to pollute the air. This technology is one of a kind because it uses the greenhouse gases in a useful application instead of polluting the air and increasing the temperature of the globe.
Forward osmosis can be used for both wastewater treatment and desalination because the same technique can be used for both applications without any changes. This shows the strengths of this method. All of the other methods that are used for desalination costs more because of the high cost involved because of the use of heat but forward osmosis uses the same arrangements for both wastewater treatment and for desalination. Because of that, forward osmosis is the solution for wastewater treatment and desalination at the Green University.
CONCLUSIONS
There are many functions of the Green University. One of the most important functions is to prepare researchers to find solutions for environmental problems and to reduce water, air and food pollution. In addition, the university itself is utilizing these green concepts and it will market them for others in the society. Furthermore, the university and its faculty and students will increase awareness of public for the importance of the environment and the methods that can be used for protecting it. In this report, the use of forward osmosis technology for wastewater treatment and for desalination has been explained. With further researches, the university could enhance it with the use of solar energy instead of depending on power generated by power plants that use oil. Solar energy can be sued for heating the solution for separating water from carob dioxide and ammonia. This will further improve the process.
Works Cited
1. Cath, Tzahi Y. “Forward Osmosis: Principles, Applications, And Recent Developments” Journal of Membrane Science May 2006 <http://www.yale.edu/env/elimelech/publication-pdf/Cath-Childress-Elimelech-JMS-2006.pdf>
2. “Forward Osmosis Could Make Water Desalination Cheaper and More Efficient” Next Big Future Dec 15 2010. <http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/12/forward-osmosis-could-make-water.html>
3. “Yale to Build Novel Forward Osmosis Desalination Pilot Plant” Yale University 5/1/2006. <http://www.freedrinkingwater.com/water-news/forward-osmosis-desalination.htm>
