Team:TU Eindhoven/Synergene/Techno-Moral Vignets/Scenario3 1

Desalination Bacteria

“With one-third of the planet’s population lacking sufficient drinking water, governments are increasingly looking to desalination to produce fresh water from seas and estuaries. Conventional desalination plants, however, consume large amounts of energy. For instance, they use reverse osmosis, in which water is forced at enormous pressure through membranes that screen out salt. This means there is a growing interest in less energy-intensive approaches.” – November 2010

Jennifer could not believe that it had been twenty years since that article was published. The world feared that it would run out of drinking water. If they knew what she knows now they would not be so scared. However, if they weren’t so scared about running out of drinking water this new method for recycling waste water while desalinating sea water may have never been put in use.

Now 45 years old, Jennifer witnessed the beginning of the water revolution. She and her colleagues at the wastewater purification plant stood at the start of this new way to purify water with the help of bacteria. These genetically modified mean-machines are able to get rid of harmful substances in the waste water during the purification process. Their byproduct is indirectly used to desalinate seawater. This new method could produce double the amount of clean drinking water with less energy used and less waste produced.

One of the first big challenges Jennifer encountered was the issue with possible multiplication of the immobilized bacteria. She and her team were stuck for almost half a year on that, but since two years they succeeded in completely nullifying the multiplication. The offspring of the bacteria were only viable if created in the lab and coated with a special material. They celebrated that night with wine and pizza. She smiled remembering that. Jack, of the team, had gotten too drunk and spilled a flask filled with chemical fluid on the floor during a stupid bet. The night ended with a lot of cleaning.

Initially, their research started with a lot of resistance. The government and specialists were afraid of the use of GMO’s, especially in the drinking water. However, after the implementation of immobilized bacteria on the filters the fears of possible contamination were put to rest. When the bill for water at the end of the month is only a third of what it was before, people tend to mind less about how that came about. The bacteria are stuck to the filters with a covalent bond and cannot escape. And not only that, all bacteria were killed anyway during the purification process anyway. All microbes need to be eliminated before the water can be considered drinking water. The bacteria only simplify the first purification steps, while enabling sea water desalination which they did so very effectively, Jennifer thought.

The next step was to build smaller purification plants in the Third World. After the new method was firstly introduced by Jennifer and her team, the whole of Europe implemented the system. The US soon followed after clearance from the FDA and other federal institutions. She was proud of what her team had managed to achieve. Soon they would fly to Nigeria to take on the next challenge.