New Eco-Friendly and Sustainable Algae-Based Way to Fight Water Pollution | Hacker News Reader

New Eco-Friendly and Sustainable Algae-Based Way to Fight Water Pollution

shooliniuniversity.com

53 pointsrustoo13 comments

To hold volumes of wastewater for this long would require wastewater treatment plants 10x the size of the current ones and would not treat the water to the same level as conventional plants. This type of technology could be used for sub-processes within plants and is already an active area of research.

New as in 200 years old technology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_sand_filter

New as in a new strain of algae useful for weeding out specific man-made forms of pollution. Also applying it to wastewater.

I’m not seeing the novelty. Constructed wetlands, rain gardens and bioswales are all pretty common surface water quality management techniques used today. Wakodahatchee is a great example of a large scale constructed wetland used for urban wastewater treatment.

Fixing things after we break them is nice, but did I miss the article mentioning not polluting the water in the first place? It seems relevant context that this proposed fix, no matter how effective, doesn't stop the pollution entering the water.

Are you planning to stop defecating?

My reading of this was: dump it in a pond, manage the oxygen levels, and algea will basically out compete everything.

I assume that they need to seed it with the right version, to stop it becoming a stagnant oxygen free environment.

The article does not mention managing oxygen levels? They do mention fish living in the water (after the cleaning), so there must be oxygen in it.

Algae blooms cause hypoxia by their decomposition at the bottoms of bodies of water. Through harvesting the algal biomass, no such decomposition can take place and a hypoxic environment is not created.

In addition, algae produce oxygen, so as long as the algae are removed after, water might become more oxygenated through algal treatment.

Uh I think they first clear the wastewater with said algae in some usual tank, then filter algae out and use the now clean water somewhere else, pisciculture or whatever. And the filtered algae biomass for biofuel.

The risk to oxygen levels might be significant lower if they are harvesting the algae and not allowing it to fall to the bottom.

I think the reading that you should have is, dump in in a treatment tank, cycle the water and scoop out the algae before the majority of the bloom decomposes, and you avoid hypoxic water post-treatment.

Aha! yes, that would be the missing link.

It makes sense as I suspect that they only bind to the heavy metals when its alive. It does say that the harvested algae can be used for biofuels, so I might be misreading that.

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