There was a post the other day on Kos about a promising new source for hydrocarbon fuels from biomass. On further examination, biomass was only part of the feed, the rest being sugars and starches. The poster and a couple of others took offense when I pointed out that cellulose is quite different than starch.

I will use tonight’s spot to explain. Sugars, starches, and cellulose belong to a large group of compounds called carbohydrates. This name is used because they all have the general formula (CH2O)n, where n can be from 4 up into the thousands.

Carbohydrates can consist of single subunits, or of two or more subunits joined together by elimination of a water molecule. The single subunit ones are called monosaccharides, two joined together are diasaccharides, and so on, with many subunits joined together are polysaccharides. There are only a few monosaccharides with n=4, and they are not often encountered. There are more with n=5, and two very important ones are ribose and deoxyribose, the building blocks of RNA and DNA. (Technically, deoxyribose is not a carbohydrate since it is an oxygen short of the general formula, hence the “deoxy” part.

Monosaccharides with n=5 or greater have the interesting property of being able to exist either in a ring or in an open chain. Here are the representations for fructose (fruit sugar, n=6, and a component of sucrose, the diasaccharide that forms table sugar).

Fructose ring Fructose open chain

Because of different functional groups, the ring form and the open chain forms have different properties. This becomes important with more complex carbohydrates. The monosaccharides exist in water solution in equilibrium with each other, changing back and forth.

There are many n=6 sugars, and glucose is the other really important one. There is a bit of a difference from fructose, however. Glucose can cyclize in two ways, either with two —0H groups on opposite sides (the 1 and 4 positions) of the ring “down”, or with one “up” and one “down”. When they are both “down”, it is called ?-glucose, with one of each it is ?-glucose. This becomes important later. Here are the representations of it:

?-Glucose ?-Glucose Open chain Glucose

There is another monosaccharide that we commonly encounter combined with glucose in lactose, milk sugar. It is called galactose, and is represented by:

Galactose

Note that is just like glucose except for the way that the —0H groups are arranged at the 1 and 4 positions. Some other post I will discuss the subtle implications of stereochemistry, but not tonight.

Fructose is sweeter than glucose, and is metabolized somewhat differently, thus making is a part of diabetic diet. But be not deceived, it is still sugar and too much of it is bad for anyone. This brings up the topic of high fructose corn sweetener (HFCS). I will address it in a couple, after we discuss sucrose.

We do not encounter monosaccharides very often, except for fructose in the store and glucose in an IV at the hospital (the medical types refer to it as dextrose, but that is just a different name for ?-glucose). The three sugars that we are most familiar with are sucrose (table sugar), lactose (milk sugar), and maltose (malt sugar). Sucrose is available in large quantities in bags, lactose is the sugar in milk and whey products, and maltose is the sugar in barley malt (we usually do not get it directly, but most flour contains malted barley flour, hence maltose).

These are all diasaccharides, formed from the condensation of two monosaccharides. Here are the representations for them:

Sucrose Lactose

Maltose

Sucrose is one glucose and one fructose joined in what is called a 1??2 glycoside link. The 1 and 2 part mean that the 1 position of the first monosaccharide is joined to the 2 position of the second one. The ? part means that the link is on the “bottom” of each unit, as represented by the diagram above. Maltose is formed from two glucose units in the same ? spatial arrangement. Lactose is different. It is one galactose and one glucose joined by a 1??4 glycoside link. The 1 and 4 mean that the 1 position of the first unit and the 4 position of the second unit are involved, but the ? part means that the “top” of the galactose is connected with the “bottom” of the glucose. I know that this seems complicated, but it is absolutely critical to understand the difference between ? and ? links to understand the differences between starch and cellulose, and indeed other materials as well.

This is bit oversimplified, but illustrates the concept. The fundamental difference is that the geometries are quite different, and those geometries results in different chemical properties. It turns out that there are lots of enzyme systems that can attack ? links, but not so many than can attack ? ones. The ? ones are also more sensitive to heat, particularly moist heat, and also to acid attack. That brings us now to high fructose corn sweetener. Well, not quite yet. First we have to consider starch, but we are getting there. There are other possibilities for bonding two monosaccharides together, with the 1 and 6 positions being common. Some materials have both 1,4 and 1,6 links.

Starch is a long chain system of glucose. It comes in two basic forms, amylose and amylopectin. Amylose is straight chained, and arranges itself into a nice helical arrangement when dispersed in cold water, to which it hydrogen bonds. Amylopectin is highly branched, and does not have much to do with water except to fall to the bottom. Here are the diagrams of them:

Amylose

Amylopectin

Although it is hard to see from the diagram, the link in amylopectin has the geometry of an ? link, so the side branches are termed 1??6 glycosidic links. Anyone who has had a busy Thanksgiving dinner preparation time is familiar with the hazards of amylopectin. You are getting the turkey out, making sure the roll go in, hoping the sport fans will help rather than just eat, and you stirred the cornstarch into the cold water for the giblet gravy. Then something happens to distract you, and when you come back to finish the gravy in five minutes, your spoon is stuck in the cornstarch. The amylopectin has settled to the bottom of the cup or bowl like concrete. The amylose is still suspended, but you strain your arm to get everything back in the cold water. By the way, amylose contains anywhere from around 20 to 20,000 glucose units, and amyopectin from thousands up to a couple of millions of glucose units. Each 1,6 sidechain may have a couple of dozen units, but those can branch as well, making for a very complex structure.

Moist amylopectin displays some interesting physical properties, and it is easy to make. Just take a cup of cornstarch and suspend in in about a quart of water. If you want to keep it for any length of time, put a couple of tablespoons of borax in it to keep the mold and bacteria from eating it fast. Stir it all up, and then let it settle. Do this in a wide bowl, because it is sort of hard to get out of a jar. Put it on a surface that moisture will not damage and try some of these.

Slowly shape it sort of like clay. It will not take a definite shape like clay will, but you can make a ball of sorts out of it. Then slowly push down from the top and it will flatten easily. Now make a new ball and punch it down with your fist. It will hardly distort at all. Perhaps a reader would elaborate. Now back to starch.

Starch is entirely glucose in 1,4 and 1,6 (all ?) links. We humans can digest ? links, so starch is a good food source. When starch is treated with certain enzymes or acids, it adds water to the links and becomes essentially pure glucose. That is Karo syrup, the baker’s delight. There is a problem with glucose, though. It is only 74% as sweet as cane sugar (sucrose). But it makes nice pecan pies.

OK, now for high fructose corn sweetener. It is Karo that has been treated with enzymes to convert some or nearly all of the glucose to fructose. Why do that? Fructose is almost twice as sweet as sucrose, and nearly three times as sweet as glucose. Converting a less sweet sugar into a more sweet one allows less to be used in, say, soft drinks, to allow for the same level of sweetness. That was the entire idea about the “New Coke” back in the early 1980′s. Cheaper to use. But there is more.

No one thought that I would leave politics out, did they? A huge driving force towards the use of HFCS is the United States tariff on sugar. As of Friday, according to Agricultureonline.com, the price of sugar on the world market is 11.65 cents per pound, but the US price is 22.95 cents per pound, due to the tariff. Close to double. No wonder Life Savers are now made in Canada (finished products are not covered by the tariff, just the sugar). So if you are a soft drink maker, and use sugar in multi ton quantities, why not use something cheaper? Now you know. Not only is HFCS not covered under the treaty, it is almost twice as sweet as sugar. So your cost is cut by almost 75%. That is a no brainer for a Yale MBA, well for most of them, unfortunately.

The question remains: is HFCS bad for you? No, I my opinion, with this caveat. A 12 ounce can of the most popular cola has 140 calories, and 39 grams of carbohydrate. All of the calories are from carbohydrate. Many people drink the equivalent of three or even more cans a day, for, say 420 calories with no nutrients other than carbohydrate. In comparison, my bottle of generic 100% juice of the cranberry variety has, for 8 ounces, the same 140 calories, 35 grams of carbohydrate, and 4% of the RDA of potassium and 130% of the RDA of Vitamin C.

My point is that HFCS is not the enemy, it is calories with no benefit. Most fruit has the same ratio of fructose to glucose as modern soft drinks, but many nutrients in addition. I suggest that you get your calories from something that gives you vitamins and minerals as well. Some people say that the sucrose sweetened soft drinks have a slightly different flavor and mouth feel than the HFCS sweetened ones. I do not know, since I drink soft drinks only rarely. I am told by those who claim to know that Coca-cola made in Mexico is “better” than the US product because it is still made with sucrose.

Now to the big one: cellulose. That is richest source of sugar that exists in our world. But it is hard to process. Why? Unlike starch, the links between the pure glucose units are 1??4 links, and they are much, much more difficult to break. Acid will not do it except under extreme conditions, and even then one ends up with cellibiose, which is two glucose molecules joined by a 1??4 link. Modern smokeless powder is made by boiling cellulose with concentrated nitric and sulfuric acids, and all that they do is replace some of the side chains, not break the long polymer. Here is a diagram of cellulose:

Cellulose

The notable features of cellulose are that it forms very long, linear chains with no branching, the links are the difficult to cleave 1??4 links, and those long polymers hydrogen bond with each other like crazy, resulting in an extremely inert material.

Enzymes will not do it, at least higher animal ones. Some bacteria have figured it out, so termites and cattle can digest cellulose anerobically with their assistance. This brings us back to lactose. Remember, it is a galactose and a glucose joined with a 1??4 link, and those are hard to break. Many people have the enzyme needed, but many others do not. Stomach acid will cleave 1??4 links, but not 1??4 ones. Only monosaccharides can be absorbed and metabolized, so if you do not have lactase, the enzyme specific for cleaving this link, you are out of luck. The lactose is not absorbed, and enters the large intestine unchanged. It then acts as an osmotic laxative, absorbing water and causing the usual effects of an osmotic laxative. Other osmotic laxatives include Epsom salt and the dreaded magnesium citrate (the little bottle that you drink before undergoing a diagnostic procedure).

Now, more about cellulose. It is an excellent fuel, because the glucose subunits have a relatively high energy content and at combustion temperatures the 1??4 links are easily split. However, cellulose is a solid (anywhere from a few hundred to many thousands of glucose subunits comprise it), so it is sort of hard to pump. It works well in the fireplace, however. If only there were a way to convert it to a more usable form. That is the promise of the so-called biomass fuel process.

It is possible to cleave those links given enough brute force, and I do mean brute force. So much force that most processes to date are not economical in converting cellulose to liquid fuels. Some processes are being developed based on enzymes such as those found in termite gut, but even at $100 per barrel, oil is still cheaper. Other processes are being developed that use catalysts and heat and pressure, but they still require input of mono or disaccharides to make the process work, and that means using food as at least part of the starting materials. It is just hard to depolymerize cellulose!

Cellulose is all around us. Wood is predominately cellulose with lignin to bind the fibers together. Lignin is a complex material composed of long polymers of highly substituted alcohols, and forms the “glue” that holds the cellulose chains together in wood, making it rigid and strong. With all the talk about modern composite structural materials (like fiberglass or carbon fiber composites), wood is the prototype. All that we have done is mimic nature.

The most pure form of cellulose that we encounter in everyday life is cotton, especially in the form of cotton wool, like the familiar cosmetic cotton balls. This is almost pure cellulose, with a little water hydrogen bonded to it. If you were to comb out the fibers and put glue on them and then compress them, the resulting product would be very much like wood.

Cotton fibers are among the longest cellulose chains, and that makes them well suited for textiles, since longer fibers are easier to spin into cloth than shorter ones are, and thinner threads are feasible when only a few long fibers are spun. That is why textiles are not made with wood pulp. Those fibers are too short to make good cloth, but they are long enough to mesh together to make paper. There are a few exceptions, where carefully selected wood and careful processes are utilized to produce textiles, but that is not very common.

US currency is predominately cotton fiber paper, hence the long wear and good texture. If wood pulp were used, the money would crease and tear mush more readily than it does.

Other sources of textile cellulose include linen, grown in temperate climates in the form of the flax plant. It produces a very nice fiber, but is expensive when compared to cotton, and lots of processing has to be done to separate the fibers from the plant. In cotton, the fiber is in the seed pod, and all that has to be done is comb out the seeds, the process known as ginning. In linen, the fibers are in the stem of the plant, and they have to be separated by a wet process, called retting, that essentially rots out the lignin and allows the fibers to be recovered.

Hemp also provides a good quality cellulose for textile and paper uses, but there are some legal issues involved. It has to be retted as well, since the fibers are in the stems. At one time hemp was heavily used for paper in the United States, and that brings up another political issue. I do not feel like taking that one on tonight.

There are many, many other sources for cellulose, and lots of them are waste products. For instance, most sugar refineries are run off of the heat produced when the sugarcane is burnt after the sugar is extracted. In Hawaii, at least one sugar refinery produces so much excess steam that it generates electricity with it and sells it to the grid.

I am optimistic that cellulose, particularly waste cellulose will be used someday for energy applications, but the current technology is just not developed to the point that we can pump it into our cars. Ideally, we would be able to extract the hydrogen from it, leaving the carbon behind for disposal (it is easier to dispose of solid carbon then it is carbon dioxide). We actually do than on a limited scale in the charcoal making process, capturing the volatiles. That does not separate the carbon completely, since some of the volatiles contain carbon. The think is, we turn around and burn the charcoal as well since it is such a good fuel.

Herein lies the problem with energy: no other common material produces nearly as much heat as carbon when it is burnt except for hydrogen on a mass basis. Hydrogen produces a little over four times the energy on a gram per gram basis, but that hydrogen has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is generally water. Well, then we have to put that energy into water to split out the hydrogen, since water is already burnt. It is the same situation as putting energy into carbon dioxide to split out the carbon.

That the rub with hydrogen. Hydrogen produced by the electrolysis of water is fine, but it is extremely expensive unless electricity is cheap. What is the cheapest source of electricity currently? Except for a few locations, like hydropower areas, it is coal fired power plants. That does not help! Nuclear or solar could produce it cleanly, but hardly cheaply.

Hydrogen is used industrially in multi-ton amounts for everything from the petroleum industry, the fertilizer industry (to make ammonia, the starting material for other products), and many other industries. Where does it come from? The refining industry produces some of its own, but almost all of the rest is produced by blowing steam through incandescent coal. In other words, coal is burned in air (producing carbon dioxide), then the air supply is cut off and steam is blown through. The products are predominately hydrogen, carbon monoxide, a little nitrogen (left over from the air and also present in small amounts in coal), and carbon dioxide.

It takes over four grams of coal burning to carbon dioxide to produce one gram of hydrogen this way. Actually, it takes more because we had to get the coal burning before we added the steam, and the reaction producing hydrogen cools off the coal, and so it has to be cut off and air started again to heat the coal back up to make the reaction go again. Thus, making hydrogen except by using electrolysis based on a carbonless electrical supply is actually much worse than just burning the carbon source directly for power. Conservation of energy is a hard master.

Well, I got a little off topic there at the end, but that was an important point to make since so many are confused about using hydrogen as a fuel. I have no problem with is as a fuel, just the way we have to get it. Questions, comments, flames, and elaboration about these or any other science and technology subjects are, as always, welcome.

Warmest regards,

Doc

This diary was inspired by NNadir’s diary earlier today on Dailykos.com and some of the comments associated with it. Whilst fusion promises a tremendous of essentially nonpolluting energy on the face of it, the technical, practical, and logistical problems associated with it are insurmountable with current technology. Here is primer on how fusion works and the associated problems.

Most of us know that sun applies fusion to make helium out of hydrogen. However, the mechanism for that is very complex and requires a couple of steps that require more energy than they release, net energy sinks, that make that approach unfeasible in terrestrial applications.

he net equation for solar energy generation is given by:4H = 1He + energy.

We can not approach the pressures in the core of the sun, where this reaction occurs, and so can not fuse four hydrogen nuclei in one helium one, because that would require either a four-body interaction (the probability for which is extremely low, even in the core of the sun) or the complex cycle that the sun uses (I am sure that Wiki has an entry for “Carbon cycle”, but that is way too complex to cover here). We cheat and use deuterium and/or tritium.

Ordinary hydrogen has a nucleus that contains a single proton (charge +1, atomic weight 1, it is also called protium). Deuterium is a rare form of natural hydrogen with a proton and a neutron as its nucleus (charge +1, atomic weight 2, also called “heavy hydrogen”, and the water made from it, D2O, is called “heavy water”), and tritium is an unstable, artificially produced isotope of hydrogen with a proton and two neutrons as its nucleus (charge +1, atomic weight 3). The nuclei are respectively referred to as protons, deuterons, and tritons.

Deuterium is good for us because helium has a nucleus composed of two protons and two neutrons, which are very nicely provided by two deuterons. Both mass and charge are conserved, so deuterium really good. Because of kinetic energy and momentum considerations, tritium is even better reacting with deuterium, and if I have space I will go into that. We will see.

There are a couple of fundamental issues that have to be covered to understand any sort of nuclear energy, be it fission or fusion. The most important, basic one is the Einstein mass/energy equivalence, as expressed by the famous equation E = mc^2. This simply means that mass and energy are two faces of the same coin, but it is costly in terms of energy to turn over the mass face, and very lucrative to turn over the energy face, by a factor of 1.6 x 10^17 meters squared/seconds squared. That is a lot! In other words, a little mass becomes a tremendous amount of energy, and a whole lot of energy is required to make a very little mass.

Another concept that is important is activation energy. This is the energy required to get a process started, regardless whether the process releases energy or requires even more to continue. A good, everyday example is lighting a fireplace. It takes more heat to get it going than comes out until the kindling is going well. Then the logs provide enough heat to keep themselves going (unless you are using elm) and provide the excess heat to warm you.

The final concepts are the two fundamental forces involved. In the case of either fission or fusion, the strong nuclear force is involved. This is the force that binds nuclei, and is essential for any nucleus with more than one positive charge (that would be hydrogen in all three forms). Without the strong interaction, the positive protons in nuclei with more protons than one would fly apart. The strong force is, well, strong, but very short ranged. It follows an inverse r-^6 relation (read as “an inverse radius [separation distance] to the sixth power), which means that nucleons (protons and neutrons) interact only when very close together. This force, as far as we know, is always attractive.

The other one, which is not important for fission, is the electrostatic force. This is the familiar force that causes that annoying static cling and frizzy hair on dry days for those of us lucky enough to have enough for an interaction. This force has two manifestations, either attractive (for positive charges interacting with negative ones), or repulsive (two like charges interacting with each other). The most important thing is that the electrostatic force follows an inverse r-^2 relation (read “an inverse r-squared relation”), meaning that it has a much longer reach than that of the strong force. Since, in fusion, the nuclei are always positively charged, for purposes of fusion this force is always repulsive.

Finally, the other key concept is the packing fraction. This is what makes both fission and fusion to work. Without going into the rigorous mathematics, it simply means that a helium nucleus (two protons and two neutrons) has a slightly lesser mass than the two protons and two neutrons that two deuterons supply. This difference is mass is exactly accounted for by E = mc^2. This conversion of mass to energy is the entire source of the energy supplied by fusion. Likewise, when uranium is fissioned into two smaller nuclei, those nuclei have a combined mass slightly smaller than the uranium nucleus had. The mass differences are less when fissioning large nuclei into small ones than when fusing little bitty ones to larger ones, but the mass to energy equivalence remains as defined by the Einstein equation.

Now, let us pull all of this wankish stuff together. Please come with me, because the results will make the rather, by necessity, disjointed facts presented above, come together and make sense. Science is not hard. Memorizing a bunch of facts is hard, at least for me. But once I see an integrated system, the parts of the system begin to make sense.

For fission, such as uranium-235 or plutonium-239, the reaction just happens if enough material (the critical mass) is brought together. No other energy is required. (In fission bombs there is a high explosive, but that just serves to put the smaller, noncritical masses together very fast and make a critical one. The explosives serve only as a means to move things together fast.) This is because the activation energy for nuclear fission is just about zero. Why is this? Because fission is induced by neutrons emitted by a heavy nucleus that spontaneously emits one, and that neutron is absorbed by a nearby nucleus, causing it to fission and release a couple of more. Those neutrons infiltrate other nearby nuclei, causing them to fission. This is the classic nuclear chain reaction. It happens so fast when critical mass is reached that an uncontrolled explosion occurs. It is possible to control it by reducing the number of neutrons available for induction of fission. That is what control rods do in a power reactor. They are composed of substances that absorb neutrons and thus reduce the rate of fission in the mass of the fuel.

Fission has a zero energy barrier (another name for activation energy) because neutrons have no charge, and so are not affected by the electrostatic repulsion of the very positively charged nucleus. In fact, slow neutrons (thermal neutrons) are more apt to be captured in many cases than fast ones, since no electrostatic repulsion is involved.

Thus, a fission reactor can be operated from complete shutdown (control rods inserted to absorb enough neutrons as not to allow any chain reaction), to meltdown, depending on the inherit design (it is possible to design one not to melt down, but it is inefficient), when no control rods or other means of cooling are available. In other words, you can tune a fission reactor to do what you want, if you are technically competent.

Fusion is a different animal. To attain fusion, two or more (two in terrestrial cases) positively charged nuclei must be moved together such that the strong force is dominant in comparison with the electrostatic repulsion. That is hard to do, because of the r^6 and r^2 relations described a while ago. The sun can do it because gravity helps a lot, but even the core of the earth does not have that kind of gravity. We have to rely on heat.

In a thermonuclear device (the hydrogen bomb), a fission device is utilized to provide the heat, and enough pressure, to get deuterium and tritium to fuse. Dammit, I wish that it would not have worked, but it did. Schade. This results in the primer, the fission part, emitting neutrons that interact with the surrounding shell of lithium deuteride, converting the lithium into tritium, that reacts after a few nanoseconds with the deuterium, forming helium (and lots of noxious materials as well, and radiation from the gamma to the radio, see my previous posts on the electromagnetic spectrum, available under my profile).

So, how do we do this for power production? At present, we do not. Whilst I am optimistic for future developments, we have no economical way of triggering the reaction, no materials capable of containing the heat required to contain the starting materials, no materials capable of moving that heat to do useful work, and no materials capable of absorbing the extreme radiation emitted in the gamma to prevent injury.

I may sound like a pessimist insofar as fusion is concerned, but I am really not at all. I just have real concerns about the technology that is available at present not only to control it, but to gain useful energy from it. It is a dead end? Not in any way. Can we exploit it next year? Not in any way. Is it the future? Oh, hell, yes.

I will stick around for a while to answer question, respond to comments, and so forth. Ye who know me know also that I do not post and run unless something unexpected happens. Warmest regards, Doc.

“These poll results demonstrate that the public is out in front of policymakers,

commented CEO Stephen E. Sandherr of the Associated General Contractors of America.

“They recognize that our deteriorating water delivery systems are in need of repair.”

WATER is among the five primordial elements considered to be vital for any type of life or vegetation on this planet. Great civilizations of the world grew and developed on the banks of big watercourses. May it be the grand Nile or the majestic Indus or other lakes and springs, water has been so important that ancient inhabitants choose it as their first preference to settle nearby. Therapeutic value of both food and water mattered to mankind right from the early days.

 Distribution of the earth’s water

Oceans and seas 97.29%
Ice caps and glaciers 2.09%
Underground aquifers 0.61%
Lakes and rivers 0.01%
Atmosphere 0.01%

The need is great in the Developing World!

1 billion people do not have access to safe drinking water

2.9 billion people do not have adequate sanitation facilities

11,000 children die each day of water-related diseases

*******************

Landslide hits town by Three Gorges Dam in China:

BEIJING, China  — Chinese authorities evacuated about 200 people living near the Three Gorges Dam in central China because of a landslide, state media and local officials said.
The landslide hit in Hubei province, inundating 37 homes and a primary school with rocks and mud, the official Xinhua News Agency said. Residents were evacuated to a temporary shelter before the landslide hit and no casualties were reported. Nearly 830,000 people in Hubei have been affected by heavy rain that has poured down on the area, Xinhua said. In addition to the landslide, the rain has caused flash floods, and two people have been killed, Xinhua said. Source

Chevron lashes out at Ecuadoreans who won award for legal battle:

SAN FRANCISCO — Chevron Corp. is sharpening its attacks against two opponents in a 15-year legal battle over whether the oil company should foot a multibillion-dollar bill to clean up a toxic stew in the Amazon rainforests.
The San Ramon-based company intensified its criticism recently while two Ecuadoreans, Pablo Fajardo and Luis Yanza, were in San Francisco to pick up the Goldman Prize, a prestigious honor given to individuals for their environmental achievements. Fajardo and Yanza won the award for spearheading a class-action lawsuit alleging that a company acquired by Chevron poisoned a 1,700-square-mile expanse of the Ecuadorean jungle — an area the size of Rhode Island. Source

South Australian residents reassured of safe drinking water:

Australia – In Adelaide, the government of South Australia and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) assured the public that the state’s drinking water is safe. CSIRO has discovered high levels of zinc, cadmium, aluminium, and arsenic in some wetlands of the Murray River that have been affected by the drought. Source

Citizens’ water caravan in the southern part of the country:

Morocco – From 11 May to 9 June, a caravan will traverse southern Morocco offering films and other activities to raise public awareness of the need for sensible water use. A recent report by the World Bank showed an alarming trend: since 1960, the average amount of groundwater available per person per year has dropped from 2500 cubic meters to 1000 cubic meters. Some experts predict that by 2050, that figure will drop by another 50%. Source

Minot, N.D. could face water supply problems:

MINOT, N.D. — City officials and residents are bracing for water supply problems if an existing dry spell continues into the summer. Without rainfall this spring, people will begin watering earlier than usual, creating a greater demand on the aquifers the city relies on, said Jason Sorenson, superintendent at the Minot Water Treatment Plant. The plant also has seen increased demand for water from companies that use it in the oil fields, though Sorenson said the level of water usage by oil companies is not yet a problem. Public works director Alan Walter said water restrictions are a possibility if the drought conditions continue in the region. Source

Senegal: Potable water and sanitation in the Ndiambour – The case of the Department of Linguere remains worrisome:

Senegal – The Department of Linguere in Senegal is one of the country’s driest, especially in the east, and the national government is searching for ways to build potable water systems there. It’s a knotty problem because of the isolation of many villages – a large number of people are pastoralists, constantly on the move from pasture to pasture – and the lack of roads, explained Awa Ngom Thiam of the Potable Water and Sanitation Program for the Millennium (PEPAM), which will oversee the work. Source

In Sicily, risk of desertification for 70% of the land surface:

Italy- Around three-quarters of the Italian island of Sicily could become a desert, with the areas around Enna, Caltanissetta, and Trapani at particular risk, warned Giovanni Arnone, head of the Regional Council’s Civil Defense Service. Addressing a seminar in Palermo that included President Gian Vito Graziano of the Sicilian Geological Society, he labeled 43.22% of Sicilian land at “very high risk” of desertification and 30.79% at “high risk.” Natural causes – Sicily’s particular geological characteristics, changes in vegetation cover, and frequent droughts and floods — account for much of the damage, but human activities make it worse, he said. Deforestation, heavy population densities in coastal areas, salinization of drawn-down aquifers, and massive pollution by fertilizers are just a few of the human factors that are wreaking havoc with Sicily’s environment. Source

Evian Plans Wetlands Preservation, Adds Recycled Plastic to Bottles:

Atlanta, Ga – Evian has established three new environmental initiatives covering wetlands and water management, recycled plastic and encouraging consumers to recycle. The bottled water producer has created the Evian Water Protection Institute to work with the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands on three water and wetlands management projects. The projects will focus on the La Plata basin in Argentina, Nepal’s Jagadishpur Reservoir and Thailand’s Bung Khong Long Lake. The projects will help local people maintain and restore wetlands, and teach and encourage sustainable management of water. Source

                                                                                             IMPORTANT UPDATE:

‘Water is the new oil,’ conference hears:

Boston — A conference here this week of environmentally oriented investors heard that “water is the new oil” and that businesses relying on increasingly scarce water supplies are no longer taking it for granted, reported an April 29 article on the “Green Tech” blog of CNetNews.com. Attendees at the Ceres Conference heard Chris Williams, director of water programs for World Wildlife Fund, say, “What’s different today is that the global business community is seeing water as a business risk and core to  their operations,” the article said. Source