Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and Jerry's over there somewhere on the
Speaker 1: other side of the membrane because she's insane in the membrane,
Speaker 1: and this is stuff you should know. I think it's
Speaker 1: pretty funny that I used to love Cyper Hill. Oh.
Speaker 1: I downloaded their album again, like the other day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's it still holds up, insane, got no brain.
Speaker 1: I love that guy. I don't remember his name actually,
Speaker 1: now I think about I don't remember the other dude's
Speaker 1: name either. I just remember their DJ was DJ Muggs, right.
Speaker 1: That sounds about right. Yeah, I remember his name. I
Speaker 1: don't remember the other like the two ms I don't remember.
Speaker 1: I think they liked marijuana smoke if I remember here
Speaker 1: there Yeah, yeah, yeah. They had a song about a bomb,
Speaker 1: I believe. Yeah, it's from that's right. I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: listen to that now. You should listen to the album again.
Speaker 1: It's still pretty good. They I mean they're talking about
Speaker 1: like shooting people and everything, just like come on, no,
Speaker 1: you don't do anything like that. But um, you know
Speaker 1: there are other stuff. The other stuff they talked about.
Speaker 1: It's pretty good. Yeah, So I am literally going to
Speaker 1: go listen to that now and you can talk about
Speaker 1: reverse Osmosis. Alright. So, Chuck, you made a reference before
Speaker 1: we started um recording that sounded really familiar to me,
Speaker 1: but it's probably only going to sound familiar to like
Speaker 1: eight other people. You referenced Osmosis Jones, right, and I
Speaker 1: was like, who is that? That sounds really familiar and
Speaker 1: I cannot, for the life of me place it, and
Speaker 1: then you said it's from our TV show. Still can't
Speaker 1: really place it, but now I kind of know what
Speaker 1: you're talking about. Actually, and now I'm doubting myself. Okay,
Speaker 1: I think Osmosis Jones is uh is a movie? Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you're thinking of Nash Pluto. No no, no,
Speaker 1: Osmosis Jones is Chris Chris Rock animated movie. Okay, I
Speaker 1: got it mixed up with something. Are are? One of
Speaker 1: our co star actors used to say a lot, which
Speaker 1: was to say Jones on the end of anything That's right,
Speaker 1: And I think it reminded me of Osmosis Jones. But
Speaker 1: I have COVID, so I'm all over the place. You
Speaker 1: are all over the place. But one thing where you
Speaker 1: really nailed at, Chuck, and I'm really appreciative that you
Speaker 1: brought up osmosis, Jones, is because we're talking about osmosis today,
Speaker 1: and in particular, we're gonna focus mostly on reverse osmosis,
Speaker 1: although we'll have to talk about regular osmosis as well.
Speaker 1: How does that sound? Yeah? I mean, can I go
Speaker 1: ahead and talk about regular osmosis? I mean, is there
Speaker 1: any better time? I can't think of a better time,
Speaker 1: certainly not in our Radium Girls episode. Yeah. I mean
Speaker 1: this is basically like if you took chemistry in high
Speaker 1: school and you have forgot everything about it since then,
Speaker 1: you might hear the words ostomosis and reverse osmosis and
Speaker 1: be like, wait a minute, that's that's tickling my brain
Speaker 1: a little bit. I know I knew that at one point.
Speaker 1: So just a little basic chemistry. One oh one is
Speaker 1: let's just talk about saltwater. Lay it on, um. Saltwater
Speaker 1: is going to figure in. Have almost said heavenly heavily here,
Speaker 1: because as you'll see, reverse osmosis is a great kind
Speaker 1: of modern way too, sort of the hip new way
Speaker 1: to take salt from water so we can drink it
Speaker 1: like you're talking of. If you make a cup of
Speaker 1: salt water and you gargle it, you know for your throat,
Speaker 1: you have some left over, you could use reverse osmosis
Speaker 1: to convert it back into regular water. That's real. Don't
Speaker 1: waste it. And we we talked about I know, we've
Speaker 1: done stuff on desalination. We did. We did an episode
Speaker 1: way back in the day hauled um, is it possible
Speaker 1: to drink the ocean or something like that. Uh, what
Speaker 1: exactly what happens when we run out of water? I
Speaker 1: think is what it was. That was way off And
Speaker 1: then I'm pretty sure we talked about drinking the ocean.
Speaker 1: We also did one on manufacturing water too, but yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we talked about this desalinating before. That's right. So back
Speaker 1: to chemistry one on one. It's very simple. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you folks remember what a solution is, but
Speaker 1: a solution is when, in this case it's with salt water,
Speaker 1: you have a solvent, which is the water, and then
Speaker 1: you have the salute, which is the salt or dissolve
Speaker 1: in the water or whatever else you want to to
Speaker 1: have in there. And this whole thing together is called
Speaker 1: a solution and if you put this solution in a YouTube,
Speaker 1: not y o u t ub dot com, but a
Speaker 1: literal beaker shaped like a tube, and you had a
Speaker 1: semi permeable membrane in the middle. Let's just go ahead
Speaker 1: and say gortex in this case, because that's what that is.
Speaker 1: Shout out cortex. And you poured this stuff in there
Speaker 1: on one side, and then you poured regular water on
Speaker 1: the other side. That water on the other side is
Speaker 1: gonna want to just balance out. It's gonna want to
Speaker 1: seek thermodynamic equilibrium, and it's gonna fight its way through there,
Speaker 1: through that membrane until everything is nice and level. It's
Speaker 1: got this osmotic pressure and it's gonna push through there
Speaker 1: until it reaches that equilibrium because that's where it wants
Speaker 1: to be. And that's yeah, because nature is seeking equilibrium.
Speaker 1: And because the the higher concentrated side is separated by
Speaker 1: a membrane from the lower concentrated side, it's got to
Speaker 1: make it through that membrane to even things out, and
Speaker 1: as it does, it's actually gonna push the concentrated side
Speaker 1: up the beaker because it's moving into that side through
Speaker 1: the membrane. It's pretty amazing stuff, but yeah, that's I mean,
Speaker 1: that's osmosis, Chuck, nicely done. Why don't you tackle reverse
Speaker 1: osmosis m so reverse osmosis so osmosis what you just
Speaker 1: described as a passive process that happens because the atmosphere
Speaker 1: above us has weight like air has weight. And in fact,
Speaker 1: if you took one square inch of a column of
Speaker 1: atmosphere of air from the surface of the Earth all
Speaker 1: the way up to the exosphere, the tippy top of
Speaker 1: the atmosphere, that one square inch column with way about
Speaker 1: fourteen and three quarter pounds. So another way to put
Speaker 1: it is, there's fourteen point seven five pounds per square
Speaker 1: ince of pressure at surface level on Earth. Because of
Speaker 1: that pressure, we have that osmotic pressure, and so the
Speaker 1: stuff can kind of move from one side to the other,
Speaker 1: from lower concentration to higher concentration to balance things out.
Speaker 1: And it's all because of that. But the whole thing
Speaker 1: is a passive process. There's nothing moving. This is not
Speaker 1: it's not requiring energy to take place. Okay, with reverse osmosis,
Speaker 1: you're doing the opposite of what you just described, and
Speaker 1: it actually does take energy. You have to create more
Speaker 1: pressure that will overcome the the natural osmotic pressure. And
Speaker 1: what you're doing in that case is actually taking the
Speaker 1: solvent in this case water and moving it out against
Speaker 1: its natural will, against every fiber of its being screaming
Speaker 1: at you that no, this is wrong, this is an
Speaker 1: importance against nature. UM. It's moving it through that membrane
Speaker 1: to the other side, to the lower concentration. So what
Speaker 1: you're doing is taking a concentrated solution and making it
Speaker 1: even more concentrated by taking out the the in this
Speaker 1: case the water. So what you have on one side
Speaker 1: is saltwater and then saltwater concentrate, and what you have
Speaker 1: on the other side is just pure water what they
Speaker 1: call ultra pure water UM, and that's basically reverse osmosis. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So if you look into UH to make saltwater not saltwater,
Speaker 1: and you had a couple of tanks and on one
Speaker 1: side you had that UM, that solution of salt water
Speaker 1: or let's just call it saltwater, and it's under that
Speaker 1: you know, regular osmotic pressure that we were talking about.
Speaker 1: It's all happy and well. You gotta apply I think
Speaker 1: about fifty to sixty bars of pressure and you gotta
Speaker 1: push that thing through there, and those salt molecules are
Speaker 1: too big to pass through the membrane, and it's it's
Speaker 1: really pretty easy. It's not the most I mean, I
Speaker 1: can't go out and build one of these, but it's
Speaker 1: not the most complicated process. It's really just if you
Speaker 1: think about trying to fit something too big through a
Speaker 1: small hole, it's not gonna go. Everything else will, so
Speaker 1: it's left over is salt or you know, sort of
Speaker 1: a briny solution, right, And what you're saying is like
Speaker 1: using pressure to push it through, Like that's that basically
Speaker 1: makes sense. But but when you're almost you're not using
Speaker 1: pressure to to push it. You're just increasing the pressure
Speaker 1: in that concentration. And then reverse OUs moostis happens by
Speaker 1: magic because you've over come that natural losmotic pressure. And
Speaker 1: now you know to the to the solution or the
Speaker 1: salt water and the ultrapure water. You know, what's up
Speaker 1: is down. Nothing makes sense anymore. All bets are off
Speaker 1: because you've overcome that natural losmotic pressure. So it's not
Speaker 1: exactly like pushing it through a membrane, which is how
Speaker 1: my brain kept going. Um, there's like it's it's a
Speaker 1: little more magic than that. But the upshot of it
Speaker 1: is that that membrane you're using is so small, the
Speaker 1: pores in it are so small that only water can
Speaker 1: make it through, and water, it turns out, was really small, Chuck.
Speaker 1: You want to know how small water is, well, prepare
Speaker 1: for it, because I'm about to lay it on you.
Speaker 1: The average, actually it wouldn't be average, would be exactly
Speaker 1: the same size. The size of a water molecule is
Speaker 1: point to seven nanometers, which is twenty seven hundred thousands
Speaker 1: of a micron, and a micron is a millionth of
Speaker 1: a meter, So a human hair's diameter is about seventy microns.
Speaker 1: A water molecule is hundred thousands of one micron. So
Speaker 1: it's really really small, which means that if you can
Speaker 1: make a membrane that is small enough, large enough for
Speaker 1: water to get through, but not much larger than that,
Speaker 1: it's going to keep a lot of other stuff from
Speaker 1: passing through that membrane as well. That's right. Uh, maybe
Speaker 1: we should take a break and we'll talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about what we've been teasing, which is desalination right
Speaker 1: after this. All right, so if you want to, I mean,
Speaker 1: water is is a commodity. We've been talking about that
Speaker 1: a lot on the show for a while and kind
Speaker 1: of trying to bang that drum that potable drinking water. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it could be a crisis in the near
Speaker 1: or far future for the world. So there have been
Speaker 1: a lot of efforts over the years, uh, kind of
Speaker 1: to try and get ahead of this a little bit.
Speaker 1: And the ocean is an obvious place to look because
Speaker 1: there's a lot of water out there. So the efforts
Speaker 1: have been made since I believe about the nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: to try and turn that that salt water into something
Speaker 1: that people can drink or at least use, you know,
Speaker 1: for other purposes. Um, you know, not necessarily like potable water,
Speaker 1: but you know, useing in industries and stuff like that. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: In particular, we've known how to like distill or to
Speaker 1: get water from saltwater pure water from saltwater using distillation,
Speaker 1: but that uses a lot of energy where you boil
Speaker 1: the water. It takes a lot of energy to boil
Speaker 1: water and boil the salt out of water. Um. And
Speaker 1: that was kind of the first attempt. But I think
Speaker 1: in the sixties they started to say, um, maybe we
Speaker 1: could take this ousmosis thing that's happening all over the
Speaker 1: place and reverse it and and we could use that
Speaker 1: to get salt out of water. Yeah, And they figured
Speaker 1: out how to do it and it was going pretty well,
Speaker 1: but they didn't have a great way to do it
Speaker 1: on a large scale that made it kind of financially
Speaker 1: practical to do until a couple of engineering grad students
Speaker 1: that U c l A. Came along. One was named
Speaker 1: Sydney Loebe and the other one's name Strini Bassa surre Rajan. Boy,
Speaker 1: you're gonna nail that. Yeah you did? Would you say
Speaker 1: it another way or no? No? And I don't have
Speaker 1: their names in front of me, but I think that
Speaker 1: you it sounded pretty believable, Chuck. You know what I do.
Speaker 1: Here's a little trick for you. And of course this
Speaker 1: is only works is if you're pronouncing the parts correctly.
Speaker 1: But I just like I looked them up on the
Speaker 1: internet and call them and ask them how to say
Speaker 1: their names. Well, you could sometimes I look on YouTube
Speaker 1: see if they're interviewed, but um, I just spell it
Speaker 1: out dictionary style, like syllable by syllable with big spaces
Speaker 1: in between. Oh yeah, yeah, and then do you make
Speaker 1: the one with the emphasis the syllable with emphasis like
Speaker 1: in all caps or something like that sometimes, or they'll
Speaker 1: scribble underline or you know, none of it's like like
Speaker 1: real dictionary style. Uh, yeah, I don't. I don't even
Speaker 1: know what swat is. It's the upside down. Oh that's
Speaker 1: a schwa. Yes, what's the word we were talking about
Speaker 1: the other day that I loved swing? I hate swing?
Speaker 1: You hate I think everybody hated schwing for a little while.
Speaker 1: They're yeah, not a fan, So all right, So I
Speaker 1: nailed those two names. They were grad students at u
Speaker 1: C l A. And they were the two gentlemen who
Speaker 1: came up with this basically the first practical reverse osmosis
Speaker 1: membrane using cellulose acetate. And it was the first time
Speaker 1: that they could actually use this on a large scale
Speaker 1: and they did so. Uh, this is actually more of
Speaker 1: a small scale operation, but the idea was the same
Speaker 1: at a place in Coalinga, California, nineteen sixty five that
Speaker 1: was online for seven years and worked pretty well from
Speaker 1: what I understand. Yeah, and at the very least it
Speaker 1: was a very good um proof of concept, I guess,
Speaker 1: you know. And it's showed that yeah, with this new
Speaker 1: this new ascetate membrane, you know, like you were saying,
Speaker 1: you can get a lot more through it at a
Speaker 1: much faster pace. Um, and that's kind of what you
Speaker 1: need if you're going to ramp this up for industrial
Speaker 1: style production. And they definitely did. That was nineteen sixty five,
Speaker 1: you said it went on online. As of two thousand nineteen,
Speaker 1: there's now a hundred and seventy seven different countries producing
Speaker 1: desalinated water using reverse osmosis. And in fact, there's I
Speaker 1: think sixteen thousand desalination plants in the world by far,
Speaker 1: the most are in Africa and the Middle East, but
Speaker 1: there's a total capacity now today, just since nineteen sixty five,
Speaker 1: this is developed where hundred million cubic meters of fresh
Speaker 1: water can be produced everyday worldwide. That is just not
Speaker 1: so from taking seawater and using reverse osmosis to turn
Speaker 1: it into pure fresh water. That's right. And uh, those
Speaker 1: numbers are growing and they need to, which is which
Speaker 1: is a great thing. I love it when we figured
Speaker 1: out how to do something and then it's just a
Speaker 1: matter of sort of getting more and more of it going. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, And I think from what I understand,
Speaker 1: you know, everybody's trying to figure out like UM, you
Speaker 1: know how to build on efficiencies or how to continue
Speaker 1: to scale up and how to use less energy and
Speaker 1: time and all that. But it's it's it seems to
Speaker 1: be one of those technologies as roughly the same as
Speaker 1: it was when they invented it initially and basically UM
Speaker 1: to kind of give just a little bit of detail
Speaker 1: on on how it goes, it's it's you you take
Speaker 1: in seawater. Most reverse osmosis plant that UM desalinate seawater
Speaker 1: built pretty close to the sea. UM because transportation is
Speaker 1: is a big cost. So if you can just pipe
Speaker 1: it right from the sea into your plant, that saves
Speaker 1: on a lot of costs and time and energy. UM.
Speaker 1: It's ramped up using pumps and then it's run through
Speaker 1: the reverse osmosis filters and under pressure that like you said,
Speaker 1: I think sixty bars of pressure, so it's a pressurized
Speaker 1: so that it overcomes the natural osmotic pressure. And it
Speaker 1: is it goes over, not through like I keep wanting
Speaker 1: to think of it going through, like there's a membrane
Speaker 1: in the water's way and it has to go through
Speaker 1: this membrane. That's not how it goes. It goes through
Speaker 1: a tube and in the center of the tube is
Speaker 1: another tube um that's wrapped in the membrane and the
Speaker 1: concentrate the salt keeps going, but the water that's in
Speaker 1: that concentrate, that salt, that solution um goes through the
Speaker 1: membrane into that inner tube, and the inner tube pushes
Speaker 1: that fresh water, that that reverse osmosis water along um
Speaker 1: into what's called the production water stream, and then that
Speaker 1: salt water just continues along its way back out to
Speaker 1: the ocean under pressure and what's called the reject stream,
Speaker 1: which is not nice, but it's you know, an accurate description.
Speaker 1: And then that's how like you would desalinate water. It
Speaker 1: is reject reject water stream. Sure as the reject stream. Sure, Okay,
Speaker 1: there you go. When you have three names, I think
Speaker 1: that's more an album title. So maybe just reject stream. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think reject stream is great. And we'll talk about
Speaker 1: that more later. Not the band, but are the imaginary
Speaker 1: band the album? Yeah? And who's playing what? Uh So,
Speaker 1: reverse osmosis is not the kind of thing that you
Speaker 1: can just you for salt water. It's a great application,
Speaker 1: of course, but it can you know, you're filtering something out,
Speaker 1: so you can filter out almost anything. Um, if you
Speaker 1: have a local water source that has way too much fluoride,
Speaker 1: you can filter out some of that fluoride in a
Speaker 1: much more efficient way than you can using charcoal filtrations. Uh.
Speaker 1: We did a show on fluoride like a thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: I remember that one. Yeah, I think it's a floride
Speaker 1: making a stupid that. I feel like that was one
Speaker 1: of our like fifteen minute episodes or something. Yeah, easily
Speaker 1: at most, I think some kind You talked about the
Speaker 1: ultrapure water, which can is the you know, one side
Speaker 1: of the result, and some companies need that stuff and
Speaker 1: some industries need that stuff. So sometimes you're filtering out
Speaker 1: things just to get that ultrapure water to use as
Speaker 1: an industry application. I think when you're manufacturing electronics sometimes,
Speaker 1: or pharmaceuticals, um, different kind of chemicals, certain medical applications.
Speaker 1: We talked about wastewater a lot of the toilet to
Speaker 1: tap that's using reverse osmosis. Right on our best episodes,
Speaker 1: I think, do you think so wastewater treatment? I mean,
Speaker 1: it's hard to say best episode when we've been doing
Speaker 1: this for eighty years, but uh, I thought it was
Speaker 1: a good one. Yeah, I thought it was good too.
Speaker 1: I was just surprised to hear you say that. But
Speaker 1: that's yeah, and toilets just happens. It's just gross, but
Speaker 1: it's it's sensible for sure. And the point of it
Speaker 1: is it's gross entirely in your mind. Like when you
Speaker 1: raise that glass of water that used to be waste water,
Speaker 1: it's just water after it's undergone reverse osmosis. Like that's it.
Speaker 1: There's nothing else in it. There's not even a memory
Speaker 1: of that kind of stuff, you know, because despite what
Speaker 1: homeopaths say, there's nothing in that water except for the water.
Speaker 1: There are some things that make it through UM, what
Speaker 1: are called containments of emerging concern UM. Some kinds of
Speaker 1: pharmaceuticals can actually make it through. They're small enough that
Speaker 1: they make it through with the water molecules. But for
Speaker 1: the most part, most everything else is filtered out by
Speaker 1: reverse osmosis UM. And one of the reasons that are
Speaker 1: One of the other industries that use it chuck is
Speaker 1: like the beverage industry, because you can take tap water
Speaker 1: from anywhere, run it through reverse osmosis filter and move
Speaker 1: even more of it through faster because you're not having
Speaker 1: you're not dealing with a briny salt solution. Like this
Speaker 1: is just tap water and you're convert you're basically turning
Speaker 1: it into a blank slate. So you could make like
Speaker 1: a soft drink taste the same anywhere in the world
Speaker 1: just by using the local tap water to produce it,
Speaker 1: you know, and now you have production facilities all over
Speaker 1: the world, so you don't have to transport it because
Speaker 1: you're able to start with reverse osmosis water. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: they use it, uh, separating away from milk. They use
Speaker 1: it in the wine industry some now they use it
Speaker 1: to make maple syrup. They remove that that sugary goodness
Speaker 1: from the water and the sap. What else, um, let's see,
Speaker 1: they use it for recycling. One of the other this
Speaker 1: is a big big deal is we'll see um. When
Speaker 1: you when you produce all sorts of stuff um through
Speaker 1: industrial processes or if you recycle things, you have to
Speaker 1: use all sorts of other chemicals you produce, like sorts
Speaker 1: of wastewater is a byproduct, and wastewater is really hard
Speaker 1: to get rid of without contaminating other water because it
Speaker 1: mixes really well. So one of the good things you
Speaker 1: can do is take wastewater, run it through reverse osmosis,
Speaker 1: and you're basically catching all of the stuff that was
Speaker 1: once mixed in with the water um and making it
Speaker 1: into a much more disposable, much closer to solid form,
Speaker 1: and then also producing reverse osmosis water that you can
Speaker 1: use for all sorts of other applications as well. And
Speaker 1: speaking of recycling, a little bit different kind of recycling.
Speaker 1: But some of these, and you know, not all of them,
Speaker 1: they're you know, there's nothing that gets me going more
Speaker 1: than it contained system. And some of these are contained systems,
Speaker 1: which is when you have a system that kind of
Speaker 1: feeds itself. We talked about these high pressure pumps that
Speaker 1: force out what did you call it again, what was
Speaker 1: the band? Rejects stream, the reject stream. That's not the
Speaker 1: God help you if you call him the reject strange,
Speaker 1: that's reject stream. That's like a letterman miss step or something.
Speaker 1: And you got a cool logo with just an RN
Speaker 1: and S that sort of are snaking around each other
Speaker 1: or something like that. This is what I see. Do
Speaker 1: you know remember the grateful dead kid with the ice
Speaker 1: cream cone on his head? Sure, I remembering along those lines,
Speaker 1: But then rather than an ice cream cone, he's got
Speaker 1: a reverse mohawk like the bad guy in Death Wish three. See,
Speaker 1: I was thinking more like the White Snake logo. Oh no,
Speaker 1: it's I don't think so. No, you just blew my
Speaker 1: mind a little bit. I'm trying to recover here by
Speaker 1: tap dancing. But I don't know, man, maybe not to
Speaker 1: get further down this road. But the other day I
Speaker 1: saw that there was some big festival in Europe with
Speaker 1: all these metal bands, and I was like, oh, looks
Speaker 1: kind of cool, and White Snake was playing. I was like,
Speaker 1: that was guys still playing. It's like, let's let me
Speaker 1: go check them out and see what they sound like.
Speaker 1: Just do yourself a favor and go to YouTube and
Speaker 1: watch like a White Snake festival from like just like
Speaker 1: put In twenty nineteen. Let's say, do they just play
Speaker 1: all their old hits? Are they making new music? Oh? Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I can't speak to that. The old
Speaker 1: hits are what's on YouTube. Um, it's not it's not great.
Speaker 1: So is it's still okay? You said his name too,
Speaker 1: because I almost said David Copperfield. It's great. He makes
Speaker 1: the stage disappear beneath his feet. That's right. You forget.
Speaker 1: That's the most important part. Yeah, it's it's not great.
Speaker 1: It's uh, just just gotta check it out. Boy, This
Speaker 1: COVID got you trash and everything. The radium girl, White Snake,
Speaker 1: I know, I love White Snake. You know Tanny Containe
Speaker 1: passed away. Maybe that's what to do with it? What? Yeah,
Speaker 1: she died a couple of years ago. I think I
Speaker 1: didn't know that. Yeah, or maybe even last year. No,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm yeah. Are you on meds right now? No?
Speaker 1: High on stuffyheadedness? I got you, you know, the natural high.
Speaker 1: So where was I? Oh? Yeah, contained systems. So they're
Speaker 1: pumping out this stuff with high pressure, and as we'll see, uh,
Speaker 1: that can go just go out into the ocean again
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about that more later. But they can
Speaker 1: also use that that force of pumping this stuff out
Speaker 1: to use it to spin a turbine. Our old friends
Speaker 1: spinning a turbine and basically reusing that stuff to to
Speaker 1: make it a closed system where it's operating itself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty many, amazing. I get jazzed by that as well.
Speaker 1: And I just realized, Chuck, basically, these desalination plants that
Speaker 1: are close to the ocean are basically a giant YouTube
Speaker 1: and in the middle there's that membrane. But really also
Speaker 1: in the middle is the the entire desalination plant. But
Speaker 1: it's just coming up one side and passing through the other. Actually,
Speaker 1: it's not a very good analogy, and I think about it,
Speaker 1: but it's a U shape at least, how about that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can also get him under your sink or on
Speaker 1: your countertop in your kitchen. Like it sounds like the
Speaker 1: most you know, large scale scientific thing you can imagine.
Speaker 1: But if you just go to a big box hardware
Speaker 1: store and you look up water filtration systems, a lot
Speaker 1: of them are reverse osmosis. Yeah, yeah, you're um, you're
Speaker 1: gonna be hard pressed actually to find one that doesn't
Speaker 1: have that, Like one of those undersink like multi filter
Speaker 1: multi stage water filters that comes with its own faucet
Speaker 1: that you have to install, But they don't. I was
Speaker 1: looking there actually, you know, um, I think they've actually
Speaker 1: come down since this article was written a couple of yeah,
Speaker 1: something like that. It seems like you can get a
Speaker 1: pretty good one for about two fifty dollars, like basically
Speaker 1: everything you need. Yeah, and then there's also own our
Speaker 1: top versions two if you want to just have one
Speaker 1: on your countertop. But I say, I say we take
Speaker 1: a break. Okay, yeah, because we we've talked all upside right,
Speaker 1: there's a dark side to this. Well not really, but
Speaker 1: you know there's some down downsides of drawbacks. Nothing dark,
Speaker 1: I would say that might be overstating it. All right,
Speaker 1: Well we'll be back right after this, everybody, Okay, okay, Chuck,
Speaker 1: welcome to the dark side of reverse osmosis. Very nice.
Speaker 1: You've got compliments on your bellow Legosi. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: very good. I don't remember what episode that was. I'll
Speaker 1: take it good. I'll take any compliment. Sure, same here,
Speaker 1: unless you're really good at not doing podcasts. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it took you a second, didn't it it really did.
Speaker 1: I think I have sympathetic COVID. I'm a little fogging myself.
Speaker 1: You know. You gotta get out of that bunk bed
Speaker 1: underneath me. You might catch it. So first, before we
Speaker 1: get started, I want to shout out Perth, Australia, Chuck,
Speaker 1: get this. Forty three of perth drinking water is made
Speaker 1: from desalinated seawater from reverse osmosis. They have two plants
Speaker 1: that we probably drank some while we were there. I'll
Speaker 1: bet we did. I'll bet we did. I don't know,
Speaker 1: it couldn't even tell, so it was right. So do
Speaker 1: you know what's funny is everyone outside of Australia got
Speaker 1: that joke because I guarantee you they didn't show that
Speaker 1: ad in Australia and they also think that Tom Broke
Speaker 1: All runs Motel six. That's right. So we're talking about
Speaker 1: the dark side of of of reverse osmosis. Plants are
Speaker 1: desalinating using reverse osmosis, and reverse osmosis in general, there's
Speaker 1: some problems with it. For one, it's really I don't
Speaker 1: want to say it's really energy intensive. It's actually not
Speaker 1: as bad as you would think. But the more you
Speaker 1: scale up and you know where you're supplying say almost
Speaker 1: half of your your town's drinking water through reverse osmosis desalination, like,
Speaker 1: the energy usage scales up, so the cost can scale up,
Speaker 1: and then also so does the carbon footprint of these things,
Speaker 1: because you know they're burning fossil fuels to run those
Speaker 1: pumps to pressurize that column of water when they send
Speaker 1: it across the reverse osmosis membrane to overcome the osmotic pressure.
Speaker 1: That's a that's a real big, that's a that's a
Speaker 1: problem with it. I guess you could say, yeah, I
Speaker 1: would say that. Another problem that we we teased earlier
Speaker 1: was the um I guess what do you call it?
Speaker 1: Harmful byproduct or just a waste waste byproduct reject stream? Yeah, sure, okay,
Speaker 1: but it is it is a byproduct that basically it's salt,
Speaker 1: it's brian it is there's a lot of it left over,
Speaker 1: and you've got to do something with it if you're
Speaker 1: not going to run it back into a closed system.
Speaker 1: And some places they just say, all right, well, it's
Speaker 1: it's saltwater and very concentrated form, so let's just pump
Speaker 1: that back into the ocean. And I'm glad I kept
Speaker 1: reading because my first thought was like, I'll sure it's saltwater,
Speaker 1: but that can't like the ocean has a certain amount
Speaker 1: of salinity on purpose probably and that that can't be
Speaker 1: great to just add a lot more. And my instinct
Speaker 1: was right, it's not. I think Australian Center for Water
Speaker 1: Research says things get back to normal at about sixteen
Speaker 1: hundred feet fives from the source. It's pretty pretty far
Speaker 1: um so anything within that that sixt feet it's it's
Speaker 1: really bad news. When they're up and that stuff back
Speaker 1: in and you know it's a fish can get out
Speaker 1: of there pretty quickly. But if you're not a fish,
Speaker 1: if you're something that crawls along on the sea floor
Speaker 1: or plant life on the sea floor, then that's really
Speaker 1: bad and it's gonna kill off a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: in that area. Yeah, which is problematic. I mean, high
Speaker 1: salinity decreases the dissolved oxygen, and fish and sea life
Speaker 1: need oxygen in the water, so it's it is a
Speaker 1: real problem for that that life that can't move away
Speaker 1: very easily. And then in addition to that too, they
Speaker 1: actually introduce certain kinds of chemicals and metals into the
Speaker 1: um the stream the feeds the feed water stream um
Speaker 1: to keep the membranes from fouling up as which happens
Speaker 1: really easily. You can imagine if you have a membrane
Speaker 1: that has pores that are just big enough to allow
Speaker 1: something that's twenty seven hundred thousands of a micrometer a
Speaker 1: micron across through, like all that stuff that's left behind
Speaker 1: is gonna gunk up the membrane is really quick. It's
Speaker 1: going to get insane in the membrane so they take
Speaker 1: exactly so they take steps to keep this from fouling,
Speaker 1: from getting clogged up by adding additional stuff. Well, that
Speaker 1: additional stuff also gets pumped out into the ocean too,
Speaker 1: which is a problem as well. There are calls for
Speaker 1: um uh additional steps to be added onto that reject
Speaker 1: stream so that before it hits the ocean, it runs
Speaker 1: through like a UV light that kills off pathogens maybe
Speaker 1: UM or maybe they need to filter out some of
Speaker 1: the stuff and reuse like the chlorine and the copper
Speaker 1: that they're introducing. Um there are things that we could
Speaker 1: do to to make the whole thing a little more
Speaker 1: environmentally friendly for sure. Yeah for their uh. I think
Speaker 1: the plant operators in Australia say that they're like, you're
Speaker 1: pumping it out so fast, made it mixes in a
Speaker 1: really quick And I don't know if I buy that.
Speaker 1: I mean, it makes sense that it mixes faster than
Speaker 1: if you're just like leaking it out slowly. But I
Speaker 1: would say, just spread it out a lot more if
Speaker 1: you could. I mean, maybe that's not practical and it's
Speaker 1: just like a a dumb guy who doesn't know how
Speaker 1: it works talking, But you know, I would disperse it more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I guess you kind of could. You could
Speaker 1: you could put like, ah, like a sprinkler head on
Speaker 1: the end, so it's not just one big column. It's
Speaker 1: just kind of Ye, it's diffug Just when I thought
Speaker 1: it was a dumb idea, No, that's a great idea.
Speaker 1: We now we need to go invent like a giant
Speaker 1: sprinkler head and patent and use it. Uh. It's not
Speaker 1: just a danger for oceans to um. Most of these
Speaker 1: plants obviously are near the ocean. Um. But if there
Speaker 1: are plants that are more inland and they're storing this
Speaker 1: stuff in tanks, you could just like you have an
Speaker 1: oil spill, you could have a sailine like a brine spill,
Speaker 1: and that would be really really harmful to the dry
Speaker 1: land vegetation and plant life and the whole ecosystem. And
Speaker 1: you know, I don't think we uh, we kind of
Speaker 1: walk past the fact that when you're pumping this stuff
Speaker 1: in the sea, it's not just like, oh, some lobsters
Speaker 1: and coral dyes, like that's part of the ecosystem that's
Speaker 1: going to set off a chain reaction uh to everything
Speaker 1: around it as well. Yeah. Um, so there there are
Speaker 1: people who are trying to come up with, like we
Speaker 1: were saying, like more efficiencies and ways around some of
Speaker 1: these problems. One of the things I saw um was
Speaker 1: out of the National Laboratory in Idaho, UM that uses
Speaker 1: something called switchable polarity solvents. Did you see that. So
Speaker 1: there's a different kind of osmosis that they're using that
Speaker 1: doesn't require um the artificial pressure built up using pumps
Speaker 1: and all that, so automatically it's less energy intensive. And
Speaker 1: they added kind of chemical called the switchable polarity solvent,
Speaker 1: which when you add it to UM the solution, it
Speaker 1: actually raises the osmotic pressure itself, so the water comes
Speaker 1: out of solution um on its own without having to
Speaker 1: be pressed. And then that switchable polarity solvent comes with it.
Speaker 1: You hit it with some heat and it basically shocks
Speaker 1: the sps that chemical out of the water UM, and
Speaker 1: then you have you've just got your water. And then
Speaker 1: you just remove that switchable polarity solvent. So it requires
Speaker 1: far less energy, which is a big improvement for sure.
Speaker 1: That's pretty amazing it is. And I saw another one
Speaker 1: that uses a double piston set up where when they
Speaker 1: they do the water treatment basically in batches where they
Speaker 1: added to that barrel that has the hollow barrel going
Speaker 1: through it with the membrane involved the actual reverse osmosis
Speaker 1: filtering on an industrial scale, they added in batches and
Speaker 1: they use a piston to push the water through, and
Speaker 1: then as the pistons moving, there's another chamber opening up
Speaker 1: behind it that's getting filled with sea water. So there's
Speaker 1: no downtime where like the piston moves to one side
Speaker 1: and then seawater fills up, and then the piston moves
Speaker 1: to the other side. It's just constantly going back and forth,
Speaker 1: and on either side there seawater that's being treated or
Speaker 1: filling up to be treated next, so you don't have downtime.
Speaker 1: But then also the sea water that's coming in is
Speaker 1: pushing the piston the other way too, so it requires
Speaker 1: less energy as well. Um And I think that one's
Speaker 1: out of Purdue. So there's some people figuring out how
Speaker 1: to make this a little better, less energy intensive, a
Speaker 1: little faster um and we'll probably see a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot more solutions, especially as water becomes more and
Speaker 1: more precious, you know. Starting now. Basically, yeah, they're also
Speaker 1: trying to find more uses for that Brian instead of
Speaker 1: trying to put it in the ocean. They're like, you know,
Speaker 1: surely people can use Brian, right, And there are some
Speaker 1: aquaculture applications in commercial aquaculture, I think talapia farms if
Speaker 1: you if you like talapia, I'm not a big fan,
Speaker 1: but tapia love really I think high high selinic would
Speaker 1: that be it? Sure? High selinic water? Sure? I mean
Speaker 1: at this point it doesn't matter. Alright, great, they like
Speaker 1: really salty water, that's how should salt water, and I
Speaker 1: think bream do as well. So they're they're starting to
Speaker 1: ship some of that stuff there, and I think, um,
Speaker 1: sometimes it can be used to grow stuff like sea
Speaker 1: beats or an animal feed or in biofuel. But I
Speaker 1: don't think it's like there's still going to be that
Speaker 1: byproduct even if they even if every tilapia farm on
Speaker 1: Earth wanted this water, you know, this bright stuff. And
Speaker 1: especially the more we produce, the more Brian we're gonna have,
Speaker 1: because I don't know if we said it or not.
Speaker 1: For every one leader of fresh water you produce, you've
Speaker 1: got one point five liters of briny water, higher salty
Speaker 1: concentration water that you're sending back out to see it
Speaker 1: kind of mess with the silin selenic count. So that's
Speaker 1: reject streams um first album. What is this selnic sound?
Speaker 1: Selnic count reject stream Alright, so Chuck, there's actually we
Speaker 1: gotta finish on this one point. There's a debate. Especially
Speaker 1: it seems like on Facebook, um is just how healthy
Speaker 1: reverse osmosis water is. And in a lot of ways
Speaker 1: it makes sense on its face to tell you the truth.
Speaker 1: People are like that seems to be the kind of
Speaker 1: like the kind of sites that are really touting this
Speaker 1: seemed to to have their links promoted on Facebook a
Speaker 1: lot um that's as diplomatic as I so. UM. So
Speaker 1: the idea is that reverse osmosis is all well and
Speaker 1: good for preventing pathogens, viruses, chemicals, minerals, metals from passing through.
Speaker 1: And when you run water through reverse osmosis filter, the
Speaker 1: ultrapure water you have on the other side is is great.
Speaker 1: But the point of these that these people are making
Speaker 1: is that it's actually too great, it's too pure, and
Speaker 1: that humans actually need more stuff than just hydrogen and
Speaker 1: oxygen mixed together, that we need other kinds of like
Speaker 1: trace minerals in our water and UM that reverse osmosis
Speaker 1: strips it out. So there's this, um, there's remineral remineralization
Speaker 1: filters that you can actually get for your reverse osmosis
Speaker 1: filter to where it goes through all the stages pre treatment, treatment,
Speaker 1: reverse osmosis, and then on the other side, the last
Speaker 1: filter is remineralization where it might add a little bit
Speaker 1: of boron, a little bit of you know, sea salt,
Speaker 1: something like that. Um, it's got a little calcium in it,
Speaker 1: and now the water is ultra pure but also beneficial
Speaker 1: for your metabolisms, optimal function. It makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: I didn't see a lot of academic debate over it.
Speaker 1: It was happening more peripherally, it seemed like. So that's
Speaker 1: why I'm a little a little incredulous of the whole thing.
Speaker 1: But it makes a lot of sense. You know, I
Speaker 1: like a good mineral water. Yeah. And apparently also if
Speaker 1: you um, if you want, if you have reverse osmosis
Speaker 1: at your house and you are like, I can't afford
Speaker 1: to REMI no realization picture s get yourself a little
Speaker 1: Himalayan salt or a little bit sea salt that's more
Speaker 1: than just salt, that contains a lot of other um
Speaker 1: beneficial elements and um metals, alkali, earth metals and stuff,
Speaker 1: and just put a little little sprinkle in there. There
Speaker 1: you go, a little taple, do you? That's right? That's
Speaker 1: the second album from Reject Stream. They're going pop. They're
Speaker 1: like Kings of Leon. They started out kind of edgy,
Speaker 1: and then the record company came to call in and
Speaker 1: they said, sign us up. I love that first King
Speaker 1: of Kings of Leon's album. And then they they said,
Speaker 1: all right, hill billy's go get a haircut, yeah, and
Speaker 1: get rich. They're like, get hot. Uh, you got anything
Speaker 1: else about Kings of Leone? Okay, Well, if you want
Speaker 1: to know more about Kings of Leon, rejects, Streame, reverse Osmoses, desalination,
Speaker 1: any of that stuff, Um, go check it out on
Speaker 1: the internet. See what happens when you search all of
Speaker 1: that at once. Maybe the un verse will explode. Since
Speaker 1: I said the universe will explode, it's time for a
Speaker 1: listener mail. I'm gonna call this conveniently an email from Peth.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, isn't it crazy? It's a full circle, man,
Speaker 1: that's synchronicity. Uh. I'm not going to read it in
Speaker 1: my terrible pasty accent. Though I wish you would, I
Speaker 1: can't do it. I'm fading. Hey guys, A big fan
Speaker 1: here from far far away Western Australia. My husband and
Speaker 1: I spent two years traveling and exploring Australia in a
Speaker 1: ute towing a caravan I don't know what that is
Speaker 1: sub van truck uh, and in the process discovered the
Speaker 1: delights of stuff you should know. It was great for
Speaker 1: days with long outback drives. I remember our very first
Speaker 1: episode that I randomly selected when we lost our podcast,
Speaker 1: Virginity Cave Diving totally nuts and we were hooked. We
Speaker 1: have since returned home to our city of Peth because
Speaker 1: of COVID put in an abrupt into their travels and
Speaker 1: now they listen on their daily drive to and from work. Luckily,
Speaker 1: there are so many years worth of shows for me
Speaker 1: to catch up on. On our travels, we spent a
Speaker 1: week in the outback town of kuber Petty, that is
Speaker 1: p E d y c O O b e R
Speaker 1: couber Petty, where a lot of worlds of the world's
Speaker 1: opals come from. You should do an episode on opals
Speaker 1: any who I couldn't help, but notice that you failed
Speaker 1: to mention that that town in the Selects Cave Dwelling episode.
Speaker 1: I listened to that one recently despite most of the
Speaker 1: town living underground and having some beautiful underground churches. Check
Speaker 1: it out on Google. Uh, there's another any who. Keep
Speaker 1: up the good work. I'll keep listening. Warm wishes that
Speaker 1: is from Tamra. Well thanks a lot, Tamara. Any who
Speaker 1: appreciate that? Did Tamras spell it h o o or
Speaker 1: w h o A and y h o oh? Yeah?
Speaker 1: There's two kinds of people in the world, and it's
Speaker 1: divided by how you spell any who? There are three
Speaker 1: kinds there. You know what the third is what the
Speaker 1: people who don't use anything? I don't know, Chuck. I
Speaker 1: think we all have a little bit of in any
Speaker 1: who user in all of us. I think you're saying
Speaker 1: you can take the person out of the any who,
Speaker 1: but you can't take the ani who out of the
Speaker 1: person you sure said it. Well, thanks again, Tamara, and
Speaker 1: shout out to Perth for a third time. Why might
Speaker 1: as well make it a hat trick And if you
Speaker 1: want your time to get shouted out, why don't you
Speaker 1: get in touch with us or build some massive desalination plants.
Speaker 1: One of the two that would help a lot. Actually,
Speaker 1: you can get in touch with us via email at
Speaker 1: stuff Podcasts at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should
Speaker 1: Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.