All About Water

What is a Polyphosphate?

Phosphates are broken down into four primary groups. Orthophosphate is used for detergents and baking, pyrophosphate for water treatment and metal cleaning, and tripolyphosphate in meat processing and, oddly enough, dish detergent. The fourth group, and the focus of this article, is polyphosphate, which is commonly used in kaolin production, water treatment, food processing and preservation, and more.

How is Polyphosphate Manufactured?

Polyphosphate is a blend of phosphoric acid and other compounds or elements. Starting with phosphoric rock, there are two methods of processing phosphoric acid. The wet process combines the phosphoric acid with sulfuric acid. This compound is generally used in the agricultural market. The dry method uses heat to purify the phosphoric rock into phosphorous pentoxide. This phosphorous pentoxide is then dissolved in either water or phosphoric acid to increase its potency. The result is the basis for polyphosphate chemical compounds.

Polyphosphate in Water Purification

Polyphosphate is an effective agent that prevents the natural iron in well water from staining concrete and other porous surfaces brown. Anyone using well water can also appreciate its odor retardant ability. Orthophosphate and polyphosphate can be used together in treating water along with additional phosphate compounds. Their job is to stabilize the quality of water, inhibit corrosion of water pathways, remove scale deposits, and discourage unhealthy microbe growth.

Polyphosphate in Food Preparation

Interestingly, polyphosphate is often used in food preservation. Chickens are injected with a polyphosphate solution directly after slaughter. This process greatly reduces thaw drip, aids in water retention, and increases the stability of the cooked meat. This method is also used when freezing fresh fish. Although salt would accomplish the same result, it is not used because excess salt can create unpleasant tastes in preserved foods.

Polyphosphate and Your Health

Since most foods break down upon consumption into a simple phosphate in the human stomach, addition of polyphosphates to food or water poses little risk. While polyphosphates can be harmful if taken in very large quantities, most people usually do not exceed the recommended daily level in their diets so there is no cause for concern.

The water cycle is the name given to the process that occurs in nature involving the chemical, water. The Sun heats the world’s oceans, which slowly evaporate, releasing water vapor into the atmosphere. As the water vapor rises, it cools and condenses into water droplets. These droplets form clouds, which release their water back to Earth as rainfall. Rivers carry the liquid water back into the sea, where the process begins again. The water cycle hydrates the Earth and makes human life possible.

Discovering The Cycle

People have asked the question, “What is the water cycle” ever since they have understood how water changes. Liquid water is the most powerful solvent yet discovered. Given enough time, water can dissolve almost anything. “What is the water cycle” has given rise to powerful ideas about nature. In time, the water cycle has proved to be one of the most astounding facts found in nature.

Freshwater

Water can be divided into two categories: freshwater and seawater. Seawater has a high salt content, which makes it bad for humans and animals to drink. Saltwater animals like fish can survive in seawater, but only freshwater is drinkable by land animals and humans. The supply of freshwater is important for the continued survival of most species of mammals.

Importance Of Freshwater To Life

Freshwater is created by the natural distillation that occurs during the water cycle. As the Sun heats the oceans, the evaporated water leaves the salt behind. The salt is too heavy to travel with the water, so the evaporated water is turned into freshwater. When this water falls as rain and snow, the lakes, rivers and streams carry the freshwater back into the ocean. The freshwater present in bodies like lakes and rivers is used by animals and humans for their needs. Humans use freshwater to drink and keep their work and living spaces clean. Animals also use it to bathe and drink.

Freshwater, Plant And Animal Life

Potable water is an important natural resource Life congregates around areas of freshwater created by the water cycle. In the Nile river delta in Egypt, greenery thrives due to the freshwater from the Nile. Surrounding the delta is a sea of sand, parched of almost every living thing. Water is essential for plant and animal life. Freshwater and plant and animal life are almost always found together. The water cycle makes life on Earth possible by making freshwater so widely available.

An Increasingly Thirsty World

The need for fresh water is increasing with the rise in the world’s population. At the same time, supplies of clean, potable water are becoming scarce to pollution and overuse. Meanwhile, the rise in global temperatures threatens to cause dramatic climatic changes and could cause more regions to become dry and desolate over the next several decades. In the face of these challenges, there is one technology that holds the key to man’s continued survival and prosperity, and that is desalination.

What is Desalination?

Desalination is the process to convert the abundant sea water into precious fresh drinking water. There are two main methods to perform desalination. The first is distillation, which is the process of heating the sea water to evaporate or boil off the water molecules, then condensing the water vapor in a separate vessel. The second process is reverse osmosis (RO), which uses pressure to push water molecules from sea water through a porous membrane that filters out the salts.

The Challenge of Desalination

Desalination sounds straightforward enough, but there is a catch. Both processes of distillation are highly energy intensive. Distillation consumes enormous amounts of energy in the form of heat to evaporate water. Meanwhile, reverse osmosis requires large power-consuming pumps to produce the pressure to push water through the membrane. The energy needs of the planet are going up enough that the added burden of desalination may be intractable. The other problem with desalination is the large capital investments required to set up the equipment needed to desalinate large amounts of sea water. To provide enough fresh water in high volumes for drinking and agriculture requires either a large heat source for distillation or large pumps and vast membranes for RO.

Overcoming the Challenge

Engineers and researchers have been working on new technologies that could answer the challenge of desalination. One potentially cost-effective method would be solar-powered desalination utilizing a large array of mirrors focused on a light absorbing vessel. The intense concentration of the sun’s energy can potentially distill large amounts of water with a virtually limitless renewable energy source. Another area of promising research is in the development of better membranes that are more stable and feature chemical modifications for improved filtration. Researchers at IBM have developed such a membrane, which is more durable and has the added benefit of chemically filtering arsenic from water sources.

Cause for Hope

It is hard to look at the trends of overpopulation and environmental strain and not see the global water crisis. Nevertheless, the power of human innovation in desalination technology could offer a solution for our dire need for fresh, clean, potable water.