5 ms·

Is the water I drink the same water I pee? Or does it get taken apart and put back together with different pieces?

by jvm___ 3y ago

nojvek 3y ago
Same H2O molecules, different levels of other molecules mixed in with it. It is possible to recycle urine into drinkable water. That’s what they do in international space station where water is very precious. https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/water_recovery_milestone https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/wat...
- kolinko 3y ago
  They also do it in Singapore iirc.
  - thombat 3y ago
    I'm curious why this would be worthwhile: since Singapore is an island conventional desalination would seem easier than either coping with the witches' brew of sewage (random amounts of random chemicals) or the expense of plumbing urine separately.
    - Cthulhu_ 3y ago
      Seem being the key word here; if it's plain sewage, there's affordable, scalable and relatively low energy ways to turn it back into clean drinking water, vs desalinization which requires a lot of energy still. But it's not just sewage though, it's chemicals as well, e.g. from medication, plus whatever else gets flushed.
      - thombat 3y ago
        Exactly: all the sewage systems I know of process it enough to dump into a sea or river, where even if a downstream town draws drinking water from it the dilution with other water plus additional environmental chemistry reduces the purification problem. In Singapore's case the sea is the obvious sink for treated sewage, which kicks it back to desalination. Except that I believe that Singapore's water comes across the causeway to the mainland in a pipe.
  - bbor 3y ago
    https://eu.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/06/02/singapore-water-recycled-sewer-water-newater-california-drought/27958823/ https://eu.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/06/02/singapore-wate... context
c54 3y ago
Metabolism converts sugars and oxygen to carbon dioxide and water. Fire has the same inputs and outputs too! You can think of metabolism as releasing the same energy as fire but with more steps so our bodies can harness and use the energy via various other chemical reactions. Most of the water from metabolism is released in your breath. Water you pee is mostly water you ingested via drinking and eating.
- mjan22640 3y ago
  How do the kidneys identify the H2O molecules origin?
  - diarrhea 3y ago
    It’s a tagged Union with associated data (the molecule), released in edition Homo Erectus. Pretty nifty feature a lot of other species lack. Abstract Human Types are much more powerful than what Homo Go can offer, for example.
- JshWright 3y ago
  The water you exhale is just the amount of water that happens to evaporate in your respiratory tract/lungs. The water you urinate is whatever "extra" water is left over (based on a bunch of factors like blood pressure, how much stuff is dissolved in you blood, etc). The water that leaves via your lungs and the water that leaves via your kidneys all had to get there via your blood. There's no distinction made based on the "source" of that water.
  - c54 3y ago
    Yes agreed fair enough
- lloeki 3y ago
  > Most of the water from metabolism is released in your breath And the reason for that is that air is bad for heat exchange and transport, water is much better, and evaporates! While the body passively cools in air (either directly when air is colder or via sweat evaporation when air is too hot) most of the heat exchange happens actively via breathing, which is nice because it's easy and quick to adjust, just by breathing faster or slower, so as to maintain 37ish C-100ish F while the body is continuously burning molecules. Without breathing we'd not only lack comburant (oxygen), we'd overheat pretty quickly!
Cthulhu_ 3y ago
The Urine of Theseus, lol

Is the water I drink the same water I pee? Or does it get taken apart and put back together with different pieces?

by jvm___ 3y ago

Is the water I drink the same water I pee? Or does it get taken apart and put back together with different pieces?

Same H2O molecules, different levels of other molecules mixed in with it. It is possible to recycle urine into drinkable water. That’s what they do in international space station where water is very precious. https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/water_recovery_milestone https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/wat...

kolinko 3y ago
They also do it in Singapore iirc.
- thombat 3y ago
  I'm curious why this would be worthwhile: since Singapore is an island conventional desalination would seem easier than either coping with the witches' brew of sewage (random amounts of random chemicals) or the expense of plumbing urine separately.
  - Cthulhu_ 3y ago
    Seem being the key word here; if it's plain sewage, there's affordable, scalable and relatively low energy ways to turn it back into clean drinking water, vs desalinization which requires a lot of energy still. But it's not just sewage though, it's chemicals as well, e.g. from medication, plus whatever else gets flushed.
    - thombat 3y ago
      Exactly: all the sewage systems I know of process it enough to dump into a sea or river, where even if a downstream town draws drinking water from it the dilution with other water plus additional environmental chemistry reduces the purification problem. In Singapore's case the sea is the obvious sink for treated sewage, which kicks it back to desalination. Except that I believe that Singapore's water comes across the causeway to the mainland in a pipe.
- bbor 3y ago
  https://eu.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/06/02/singapore-water-recycled-sewer-water-newater-california-drought/27958823/ https://eu.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/06/02/singapore-wate... context

c54 3y ago

Metabolism converts sugars and oxygen to carbon dioxide and water. Fire has the same inputs and outputs too! You can think of metabolism as releasing the same energy as fire but with more steps so our bodies can harness and use the energy via various other chemical reactions. Most of the water from metabolism is released in your breath. Water you pee is mostly water you ingested via drinking and eating.

mjan22640 3y ago
How do the kidneys identify the H2O molecules origin?
- diarrhea 3y ago
  It’s a tagged Union with associated data (the molecule), released in edition Homo Erectus. Pretty nifty feature a lot of other species lack. Abstract Human Types are much more powerful than what Homo Go can offer, for example.
JshWright 3y ago
The water you exhale is just the amount of water that happens to evaporate in your respiratory tract/lungs. The water you urinate is whatever "extra" water is left over (based on a bunch of factors like blood pressure, how much stuff is dissolved in you blood, etc). The water that leaves via your lungs and the water that leaves via your kidneys all had to get there via your blood. There's no distinction made based on the "source" of that water.
- c54 3y ago
  Yes agreed fair enough
lloeki 3y ago
> Most of the water from metabolism is released in your breath And the reason for that is that air is bad for heat exchange and transport, water is much better, and evaporates! While the body passively cools in air (either directly when air is colder or via sweat evaporation when air is too hot) most of the heat exchange happens actively via breathing, which is nice because it's easy and quick to adjust, just by breathing faster or slower, so as to maintain 37ish C-100ish F while the body is continuously burning molecules. Without breathing we'd not only lack comburant (oxygen), we'd overheat pretty quickly!

Cthulhu_ 3y ago

The Urine of Theseus, lol