• 32 Posts
  • 37 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 12th, 2023

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  • You’re very right about prions. But there’s more passing through reverse osmosis membranes than meets the eye.

    Size cut-off is not the sole trans-membrane transport process. The material of some membranes allow the diffusion of some molecules - roughly, hydrophobic membrane materials allow diffusion of hydrophobic molecules… its more specific than this, though.

    There are targeted studies to assess the removal of micropullutants that show that some micropollutants can pass membranes even though their size is bigger than what would reasonably be expected to be retained.

    I don’t know anybody studying this with broad spectrum techniques that uncover unknown-unknowns.






  • IR’s México, warm and dry, it is a pretty safe bet that they’ll have evaporative cooling.

    The alternative, without evaporative cooling, implies the release of pretty warm water. Which, if you go see has some damnning environmental impacts and can even be the limiting factor in say nuclear plants sizing.

    Moreover, you talk as if the withrawal of information by these datacenter companies should be used as justification for “we don’t have the whole information why are you assuming the worst”. Thats a very flawed logic on itself but …well, look into some environmental history books and tell me what you see when companies use that argument as justification not to look closer.


















  • Better for what?

    Moving parts and complexity makes it more prone to failure.

    Also, how much energy do you need to keep this working? It’s not said on the website.

    Granted, both kettle and this zori trade energy and complexity/failure-potential for convenience. Much more so the zori. How much is unknown. On the simple, less-energy end, you’d use an electrical resistance in an insulated jar.

    All electric kettles will fail at some point. They have moving parts and are designed for obsolescence.

    In my place I use a kettle that allows me to boil 1 cup of water. The filter mesh has failed long ago but the water does not have hardness. Instead I use a small improvised cap to keep the flow of vapour to the cut off thermostat (usually at the bottom of the handle).





  • It was good advice.

    The basic goal for treated wastewater is to have a low amount of easily digestible carbon source food.

    Then usually the goal is about reducing the amount of other nutrients as nitrogen, then phosphorus…

    All of this designed to avoid an unbalanced overgrowth of microbes in the water body that receives the wastewater stream. Were dilution, the sun and natural microbial predation are expected to further stabilize the (waste)water and allow for the death of contagious disease carrying microorganisms.

    In the last couple of decades the research focus also looks at maybe reducing the amount of micropullutants these wastewaters are carrying — like non degraded medicines or other substances that have been found to have nefarious effects on the environment and maybe humans. —research.

    When the goal is recycling the water, consideration is made to the content of disease causing microorganisms, like E. Coli, Staph., and a wide miriad of parasites that the current modern world best practices (barely) keep at bay - like tenías, giardia, etc., etc., etc… And not much is known about wastewater and the spread of viruses (like the COVID one).

    Recycled water can be improved, usually at a higher cost of treatment. And always regarding specific targets. The unknowns and unmeasurables are not considered.*

    So, yes, not all recycled water is brought to the same quality.

    …It was good advise.

    EDIT: * nowaday, at research level there are a few million dollar plus equipments that are quite a bit thorough on measuring stuff. And the unknown unknowns can be quite more controlled. But at a legal level things are far from it.