Flocculant/Disinfectant Powder
cdc.gov
cdc.gov
Apparently trees evolved hundreds of millions of years before the bacteria that can make wood rot arrived, so you probably had piles of dead trees everywhere for such a long time.
But I suppose the majority of the mass must come from water and carbon in the air.
From a cursory search, it looks like about 88% of the dry mass of a tree comes from the atmosphere (CO2 and H2O).
Edit: I misread what you said. I think you are claiming that because there is so much carbon and oxygen, probably more than half comes from CO2. But there is both carbon and oxygen (well really, air) in soil. Although apparently the concentration of CO2 in the soil's air is much higher than it is in the normal atmosphere, so it's possible your statement is correct. (Plus looking at dry wood composition is a bit odd when it's generally less than 15% moisture content - that leaves out a lot of water that's present in a living tree.)
Trees are mostly C6 H10 O5, coming from CO2 and H20. Based on atomic weight about 70% of the mass of the dry wood comes from CO2. Fresh wood will have extra water content, taken from the soil (though that water came from the air too).
There is carbon in the soil, but most plants don't take carbon up from their roots meaningfully. Nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and other trace minerals. Decomposers like fungi, bacteria, and insects will eat the carbon in the soil and release CO2.
I mean sure some of that could happen due to a bit of wind, so you’re not at all wrong. But the volume of thick loamy topsoil isn’t mostly tiny rock grains (sand) but a living amalgam of bacteria, fungi, plant matter, plantae, animal detritus (faeces but also cast off skin or carapaces...).
Part of the problem with modern farming is that parts of the economic process treat the soil as an inert matrix (just as road bike manufacturers justifiably (in their case) don’t spend time thinking of the road as part of the bike system).
This is a product designed for somewhat demanding conditions.
If anything your good argument really asks why a more biodegradable approach is not used in places that could afford it (I don’t mean economically but in “having the affordances for”). Western countries can manage to reliably package and use flour in biodegradable paper packages, why not other products? And the plastic bags that are a scourge upon the landscape not just of India are formthe most part not really needed.
$3/kilo sounds far more reasonable, and it should be sold in 1kg containers and users instructed to use a teaspoon per large bucket.
One is everyday disinfection of drinking water. For that purpose a large container might be more economical, provided that it can be kept reasonably watertight through three years of daily use. (1 gram per day per family means a 1kg container will last 2-3 years.)
The other is emergency use in disaster zones for a limited amount of time. For this purpose a bunch of sealed sachets is much easier to transport and distribute despite the high unit cost.
I wonder if it would have to stay in the packets or smaller containers to maintain its efficacy?
(probably more than 1g per sachet, 4g as it says in the picture)
Given that these are pretty gnarly chemicals in bulk, I don't think you want users handling them. Training users on PPE and procedure and supplying the PPE is a whole mess.
I have no idea where you got $3 from.
As a yard stick of cost: surface water treatment costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $1/1,000 gallons in the developed world.
"Proctologists and gamblers" form a water-disinfectant powder. What a weird world we live in!
This is the official website. https://csdw.org/
Also, a link to lab results would be great. The article (but not the official website) says it removes some heavy metals. I wonder in what concentration, and which metals.
Also, how does this compare in cost to a softener + carbon + uv/chlorine?
Anyway, this looks like a fantastic technology. Thanks!
Obviously it doesn't provide total purity, but it was a lot better than doing nothing.
Apparently even the ancient Egyptians knew about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_alum#In_antiquity
Are you saying those two components are too expensive on Amazon?..
I was referring to the fact that Amazon sellers are charging 50 cents to two dollars (!) for a packet that is sold by the manufacturer for 3.5 cents.
Not to ship halfway around the world, warehouse, pick, package and ship.
10 cents for 10 liters, or a penny a liter. still a lot more than 3.5 cents, but not crazy.
Yeah, no.
As the other poster noted, the article explicitly says that the retail price, including shipping, is about 10 cents.
You can often find it in the spice section. People use it to make pickles.
McCormick/Schilling sells it, among other major brands.
Walmart sells "Hoosier Hill Farm" brand for about $15/pound.
Hoarding the clearance pickling supplies after the season is over is a long tradition in my family. :)
Giardia is definitely present in Pakistan, where this is being manufactured.
Giardiosis happen rather routinely even in places like Shanghai. Personal experience.
0/10, would not recommend.
I don't know the cost of lifestraws to NGOs, but I guess they're more expensive. And you need one lifestraw per person, where these sachets can do bulk buckets of water.
It's been my experience that water operators take a lot of pride in their work and are happy to educate the public about what it is they do.
I have both stored fresh water as well as a filter in case of emergency, I'm not counting on my local water authority being able to pump water uphill to where I live for long during a disaster.
FYI a flocculant can be used to settle out really dirty water, it needs to be mixed well to work correctly. Flocculants include ferric and alum. Bleach is typically used as a disinfectant to reduce bacteria and viruses. Oocysts are not destroyed by chlorine and have to be filtered out. Most surface water treatment plants use sand filters. Granulated carbon filters are increasingly common to remove trace chemical contaminants, but these will also adsorb chlorine, advise disinfectant after the filter step.
Amdahl’s law, and what not.
Thanks for educating me about Amdahl's law. Some interesting reading to do around that.
I'm not sure which the OP was asking about.
Admittedly, I don't know how much that ingredient costs in bulk, but I bet if an agency wanted to produce it in bulk for widespread water purification, it'd cost a lot less than 50 cents/L
The flocculant agent in this product binds with the sediment, making it easier to filter out with a simple cotton filter.
I think this gets at the heart of the issue. If stiring in a powder and straining your water to prevent disease and parasites is too complicated to understand or too time consuming to do consistently, imaging how difficult it will be for these people to build water treatment plants and ultimately build an industrialized economy. Which is why they haven't done so while other nations did it without any assistance centuries ago. There simply is no easy solution to poverty in the third world, and obsessing over it will get you nowhere.