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First Eco-Friendly Filter Removing 'Microplastics in Water,'
- orangepurple 4y agoAre normal activated carbon water filters NOT eco-friendly (by implication)?
- thereisnospork 4y agoIf they were eco-friendly it certainly would be inconvenient for their marketing strategy.
- sp332 4y agoYou can't rinse and re-use an activated carbon filter.
- danparsonson 4y agoWouldn't rinsing this filter just throw all the plastic back into the water system?
- sp332 4y agoYou could put it in a landfill instead?
- vanderZwan 4y agoDepends on how you handle the water. You can evaporate it for example and try to extract the plastics. Or maybe treat it chemically (which might cheaper if the microplastic concentration is higher in water used in cleaning the filter)
- throwaway09223 4y agoActivated carbon is typically used to catalyze organic compounds. There are better filters for physically trapping particles - like RO membranes. All filters have a cost. It looks like they're trying to do a better job using electrophoresis, which is great!
- orangepurple 4y agoMy multistage undersink water filter uses sand, then carbon, then the RO membrane, in that order, to greatly extend the lifespan of the RO membrane
- vanderZwan 4y ago> Prof. Lee Ju-hyuck's research team in joint research with Dr. Cho Han-cheol's team at the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology developed the world's first eco-friendly power generation device that removes fine particles in the water. If I read this text correctly it doesn't cost extra energy but filters as a byproduct of energy generation, and other wording implies it avoids issues of microclogging and requiring replacement (otherwise that wouldn't have been mentioned as a downside of filters). I suppose that does make it a lot eco-friendlier than alternatives. The part where it only removes 24% of all microparticles means it's not going to be a complete solution however. OTOH that's 24% fewer particles to clog up later filters
- bratwurst3000 4y agoHmmm interesting. But there are many open questions How much does it cost to produce it in relation to how much microplastic it is getting out? How has the water to be prepared? How is it protecting fish? How does it not filter plankton? Etc Interesting but questions are there
- mercy_dude 4y agoHumans amaze me. We do things that creates enough problem that then cause other problems. But instead of solving the root problems we solve further up the stack and in that process waste further resources. And as a byproduct create more problems. Examples: instead of banning plastics, instead of throwing it in the water, instead of recycling we go about fixing the micro plastic that keep leeching in the water.
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- viraptor 4y agoEven if we stopped the production completely right now, that doesn't remove what's already in the water. The root problem in this case is: it's already out there.
- blueflow 4y agoIs it stable in the water, indefinitely? That would surprise me.
- smileybarry 4y agoIt is, that’s the problem with microplastics. They just last and they “decompose” into smaller and smaller plastics. That’s how we got here.
- throwaway09223 4y agoIt's not. Plastics do decompose slowly, but they certainly do decompose -- especially under sunlight. If they didn't decompose we would have a lot more plastic in the environment than we do now. Here's a recent study on the rate of decomposition in the ocean: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304389419310192 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030438941...
- 4y ago
- IYasha 4y agoGood to know! I didn't even realize the problem until one day I saw an infographic stating "average human consumes a credit card worth of plastic every week". And after some research that turned out to be, to an extent, true.
- CatWChainsaw 4y agoI thought that was per year?