Report: California’s water systems are in deep trouble
April 21, 2021
America has underinvested in its aging water systems. A new study in California highlights the gaps.
April 21, 2021
America has underinvested in its aging water systems. A new study in California highlights the gaps.
April 15, 2021
The team led by Associate Professor Haolan Xu has refined a technique to derive fresh water from sea water, brackish water or contaminated water through solar evaporation — delivering enough daily fresh drinking water for a family of four from just one square metre of source water. “In recent years, there has been a lot of attention on using solar evaporation to create fresh drinking water, but
...April 12, 2021
A trial of a fungi-based floating wetlands solution to create healthier, cleaner waterways is underway at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne. Affectionately known as ‘mushi’ (pronounced moo-shi), the three floating wetlands of interlocking triangular-shaped modules have been designed by local engineers, researchers and architects. Instead of using traditional plastic, this
...April 8, 2021
Oil spills are difficult to clean up and can result in damage to a marine ecosystem. Now, a promising ‘eco-friendly’ sponge alternative has been developed from sunflower pollen to help tackle this problem. A team of scientists led by Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) has created a reusable, biodegradable sponge that can soak up oil and other organic solvents from
...April 6, 2021
Product life cycles traditionally follow a linear economy, where materials are transformed into products that are then used and thrown away in a ‘take-make-waste’ approach. This is unsustainable. The primary principle of a circular economy is keeping assets in use to create a responsible way of using resources at the same time as reducing waste. Circularity is crucial in closing the loop of
...March 31, 2021
Today we are mainly able to operate assets remotely, which is a boon to productivity, accuracy and efficiency. However, many areas are still unable to retrieve valuable data from their remote assets. This may include the monitoring of flow volume, water quality, level and pressure, amongst others. Planning and implementing large-scale remote monitoring solutions isn’t simple, and there are many
...March 10, 2021
How conditions become ripe for carbon capture and storage to bloom in the ethanol industry.
March 8, 2021
Plans to build Australia’s first ‘green’ port near Exmouth on Western Australia’s north-west coast are underway, with Gascoyne Gateway progressing with the company’s next round of community reference groups. The proposed Gascoyne Gateway marine facility — expected to set a new benchmark in marine environmental management — is a single-jetty deep-water
...March 7, 2021
Reported to be the first of its kind in the Asia–Pacific region, the treatment facility at Queensland’s Urban Utilities’ Luggage Point Resource Recovery Centre uses Anita Mox technology to naturally remove ammonium and nitrogen from sewage via anammox, or anaerobic ammonium oxidation. Organic nutrients like ammonium and nitrogen must be removed from sewage to protect the quality of
...March 4, 2021
The Australian Government has released its National Plastics Plan 2021, proposing a wide range of APCO-led initiatives to fight plastic waste by reducing plastic packaging, and improving recycling and recycled content uptake in the Australian marketplace. The multi-pronged approach includes plastic-free beaches, new labelling guidelines, eliminating expanded polystyrene consumer packaging fill and
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