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Is Urine the new Fresh Water Source?

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The title says it all. Looks like in the distant future we could be drinking fresh water made of our urine. NASA has developed a water purification system that collects astronaut's sweat, moisture from respiration, drain water, and urine - and turns it all into drinking water.

NASA has been working on this technology due to the heavy expense it incurs with transporting fresh water to the space station. Over the past five years, the agency has spent $60 million delivering potable water to the International Space Station on the space shuttle (6 tons at a cost of about $40,000 per gallon). Deploying the Water Recovery System on the ISS will cut the volume of water hauled into space by two-thirds and free up enough room on the shuttle for four more astronauts.

Water Security has added a special filter to the NASA unit, creating a system that can remove 99.9 percent (what about the other .01 percent) of all waterborne viruses, which could prove particularly useful in the developing world. The United Nations estimates that more than 1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water and that 10 million die each year as a result of contaminated water supplies and inadequate sanitation.

Water Security has already begun putting the technology to work in areas where freshwater is in short supply. This summer, global relief agency Concern for Kids deployed a foot-powered purification unit in northern Iraq. Robert and Roni Anderson, Concern's founders, loaded it onto the back of a Toyota pickup and drove to dozens of villages to purify their groundwater. The unit pumps out 5 gallons per minute, and a single day of purification can sustain a village of 5,000 people for a month. The cost is about 3 cents a gallon. Iraqi water companies, by comparison, charge $4 a gallon.

I will not even try to explain how this system works for it is far to complicated for my simple mind. However, I am curious to see how many of you would adopt this method for drinking water. I know for myself, it might taste fine but in the back of my head it will always be there that I am drinking urine. Yuck!!
3 Responses to "Is Urine the new Fresh Water Source?"
beth said :
May 16, 2008 1:19 PM
We need to be able to recycle are grey waters before we get to this point
Anonymous said :
May 17, 2008 4:23 AM
That's really not very disturbing considering the fact that nature has been doing that very thing since the beginning of time. I mean, this is something we all learned in about second or third grade. Water goes through an endless cycle, and part of it is coming from animal waste and running into rivers and whatnot to clean it out. I promise you, it's been happening forever, so now we're just catching up to Mother Nature.
Maryland Green Power said :
May 22, 2008 7:23 AM
Right, in the back of my mind I am also thinking "yuck!" But some of our drinking water is pumped out of rivers and minimally treated. Other localities are pumping their minimally treated sewage into those same rivers, not to mention sewage leaks into our water supplies.

If I had to guess, probably more than 0.1 percent of our drinking water already is urine. The system in the article most likely does a better job of filtering than what we already get through our taps. But still - yuck!

But before you worry about urine in the water, I think we have bigger problems like: pesticides, herbicides (lawn herbicides are chemically similar to agent orange), prescription medications (would you like another sip of Prozac, birth control?), etc.

If male fish in some rivers are producing eggs, then there seems to be more to worry about than just the yuck factor!

I agree with the other comments on grey water recycling. My website contains links to rain water capture systems, run-off reduction paving systems for parking lots, grey water recycling, and water purification systems, including a water-from-air device:

Water and Energy Saving Systems

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