Make ANY Water Drinkable

Time to AskNature.org #4

The more companies look for their business solutions in Nature, the closer we will all come to harmony with planet Earth!

In this post:
Biomimicry is the practice of copying Nature
Ray of Hope Prize Program Finalist – aquammodate.com
Another look at biomimicry from Alexandre Magnin
…Remember at the bottom a list of other posts about Nature

Biomimicry is the practice of
learning from and using
Nature’s Solutions
to solve human problems.

“Biomimicry is no longer just a new way to see and value nature, it is also our path to survival.”
– Janine Benyus, co-founder of the Biomimicry Institute

The Ray of Hope Prize celebrates
nature-inspired solutions in Business

**Meet one of the 2021 – Ray of Hope Prize Finalists**

aquammodate filter to Make any Water Drinkable- Make ANY Water Drinkable – Nature’s Filter < Simple Natural

aquammodate.com

How to Make ANY Water Drinkable

Critical Need: Clean Drinkable Water

SDG 6 drinkable water- Make ANY Water Drinkable – Nature’s Filter < Simple Natural

Today, 2.2 billion people lack access to safely managed drinking water. Climate change is exacerbating the situation, with increasing disasters such as floods and droughts. 80 per cent of wastewater in the world flows back into the ecosystem without being treated or reused, and 70 per cent of the world’s natural wetland has been lost, including a significant loss of freshwater species.

Now more than ever the world needs to transform the way it manages its water resources and delivers water and sanitation services for billions of people. Urgent action is needed to overcome this global crisis.

One of the methods we currently rely on for drinkable water is expensive Desalination Facilities like this:

1:54 minutes – Jebel Ali M Desalination Plant, UAE – Webuild Project

Biomimicry in Practice

How does nature filter water?
I have just learned that we humans consist of some 70% salt water. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2003 was rewarded to two scientists whose discoveries have clarified how salts (ions) and water are transported out of and into the cells of the body. …

aquaporins

aquaporin- Make ANY Water Drinkable – Nature’s Filter < Simple Natural — **Nobel Prize 2003**

…it was not until 1988 that Peter Agre succeeded in isolating a membrane protein that, a year or so later, he realised must be the long-sought-after “water channel” [known as the aquaporin cell membrane]. This decisive discovery opened the door to a whole series of biochemical, physiological and genetic studies of water channels in bacteria, plants and mammals. Today, researchers can follow in detail a water molecule on its way through the cell membrane and understand why only water, not other small molecules or ions, can pass. …

…The other type of membrane channel which is the subject of that Prize is the “ion channel”. Roderick MacKinnon surprised the whole research community when in 1998 he was able to determine the spatial structure of a potassium channel. Thanks to this contribution we can now “see” ions flowing through channels that can be opened and closed by different cellular signals.

[What is most important to us in this particular case is that these molecules of different ions can be allowed to pass the water channels or not. From another project, this video shows how that works. …..]

Diatoms

diatom- Make ANY Water Drinkable – Nature’s Filter < Simple Natural

In the case of aquammodate.com, they needed some kind of structure for their “aquaporins” in order to make a filter. They have used another source in nature, the Diatom, as the framework for their aquaporin water filter.

Diatoms (diá-tom-os ‘cut in half’, from diá, ‘through’ or ‘apart’, and the root of tém-n-ō, ‘I cut’) are a major group of algae, specifically microalgae, found in the oceans, waterways and soils of the world. Living diatoms make up a significant portion of the Earth’s biomass: they generate about 20 to 50 percent of the oxygen produced on the planet each year, take in over 6.7 billion metric tons of silicon each year from the waters in which they live, and constitute nearly half of the organic material found in the oceans. The shells of dead diatoms can reach as much as a half-mile (800 m) deep on the ocean floor, and the entire Amazon basin is fertilized annually by 27 million tons of diatom shell dust transported by transatlantic winds from the African Sahara, much of it from the Bodélé Depression, which was once made up of a system of fresh-water lakes.

How to Make ANY Water Drinkable

Solution:

Aquammodate is on the cusp of revolutionizing the water purification industry. The team is mimicking the way diatoms form their cell wall out of silica and utilizing aquaporins, proteins that transport pure water across cell membranes throughout nature. Their energy-efficient and selective technology produces high purity grade water in a single filter pass, desalination at any scale, and removes industrial pollutants and contaminants such as arsenic, microplastics, and pharmaceutical residues. Stora Höga, Sweden aquammodate.com

We have developed a bioinspired method to stabilize aquaporins in order to make use of their extraordinary features in water purification and treatment processes. The key stabilization components are lipids and silicon dioxide (silica). The lipids are dual purpose since they both mimic the natural environment of the aquaporins and act as the impermeable component in the filter. Silica provides the biological components with mechanical and chemical robustness while preserving their structure.

aquammodate‘s patent pending water puriﬁcation powder is embedded inside existing water membranes, acting as fast lanes for 100% pure water. The powder is made from naturally abundant components from yeast and sand that can help existing processes achieve 100 times productivity increase. The solution only transports water molecules, ridding water of salts, PFAS, microplastics, metals, pharmaceuticals, etc.

Biomimicry in Practice
Time to AskNature.org