Nano-Sponge Cleans Up Water Runoff

ORIGINAL: Popular Mechanics

by Sarah Fecht

January 24, 2013

We’ve all seen the oily rainbow sheen in parking lot puddles after a storm. But it’s easy to forget what happens next: That oil finds its way to a storm drainage system, where it’s likely to be flushed untreated into local waterways, and could carry with it pesticides, household chemicals, PCBs, and nutrients that cause algae blooms. 

"Stormwater runoff is one of the biggest problems in America in terms of water pollution," says Paul Edmiston, a chemist with ABSMaterials who won a 2011 PopMech Breakthrough Award for Osorb, a nanoparticle product that soaks up non-polar molecules and can remove 90 to 100 percent of water pollutants. (You can watch the video of Edmiston emptying a bottle of motor oil into a glass of water, shaking in the white powder, and then drinking it up.) Edmiston and ABSMaterials have announced they are now using Osorb to clean up storm water runoff at the College of Wooster in Ohio. 

Wooster contracted the ABSMaterials team to set up bioswales, drainage ditches that use plants to slow the movement of water, across the campus’ agricultural fields and parking lots. These bioswales will also contain a small percentage of Osorb mixed in with the soil and plants. The Osorb grabs the pollutants in the runoff, then releases them slowly so that the soil microbes and plants can biodegrade the chemicals without being poisoned. 

Edmiston estimates that one 20-foot by 5-foot Osorb bioswale plot can reduce the runoff from a 30,000 square foot parking lot by 516,000 gallons of water per year, and could treat up to 1 million gallons per month. The output is clean water that seeps into the ground, and Edmiston says the plants seem to like growing in the Osorb-soil. 

His team has already been testing a plot at the College of Wooster, and is now working to expanding to treat runoff from the campus’ 20 acres of parking lots and other areas where drainage is a problem. Ohio State and Purdue universities are also considering installing Osorb-enhanced bioswales. 

"We can’t build a pipe to every parking lot and agricultural field, but if we can take a small amount of space and turn it into green infrastructure, we can treat the water on-site and percolate it into groundwater cleanly," Edmiston says. 

Quebec pledges $2.7 billion to tackle climate change

ORIGINAL: Edmonton Journal

BY MONIQUE BEAUDIN, 

THE GAZETTE JUNE 3, 2012

MONTREAL - Quebec plans to spend $2.7 billion to tackle climate change by 2020.

In the new 2013-20 climate-change action plan, made public in Montreal on Sunday by Premier Jean Charest, Quebec will act on a variety of fronts to meet its goal of bringing greenhouse-gas emissions to 20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020.

In 2009, Quebec’s greenhouse-gas emissions were 2.5 per cent below 1990 levels. In order to reach its 2020 goal, Quebec estimates it would have to cut emissions by 11.7 megatonnes by 2020. The plan announced Sunday, the first part of a two-phase plan, would cut about 6.1 megatonnes, the government said. The second phase of the plan will be announced between now and 2020.

Quebec plans to spend two-thirds of the money on transportation measures, such as improving public transit, carpooling, taxi-sharing and active transportation like walking and cycling.

The transportation sector creates nearly half of Quebec’s greenhouse-gas emissions.

Quebec plans to spend about $200 million helping companies improve their carbon footprint and energy efficiency, and another

$100 million on research into reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, developing climate-monitoring networks and adapting to climate change.

The government also will spend $94 million helping municipalities and communities cut greenhouse-gas emissions, adapt to climate change and practise sustainable land-use planning.

New funding for municipal climate programs will allow cities like Montreal to tackle the problems of heat-island effect and stormwater run-off, said Montreal executive-committee vice-chairman Alan DeSousa, who is in charge of sustainable development for the city.

Other measures announced Sunday include adopting new energy-efficiency standards for home appliances, encouraging the use of hybrid trucks and supporting the development of environmentally friendly neighbourhoods.

Funding for the plan will come from revenues from a new carbon market, the government said.

Municipalities welcomed the government’s announcement that it would invest in municipal climate programs, while the Société de Transport de Montréal said the plan confirms the importance of public transit in the fight against climate change.

But environmental groups said the government could have done much more.

While certain aspects of the plan are “interesting,” the government should be reducing its investments in new highways and road projects, said the groups Équiterre and the David Suzuki Foundation. The only way to reach the 2020 goal is for the province to make a major shift to public transit, the groups said.

The Federation of Quebec Municipalities, while welcoming the new funding for municipal climate programs, said it would have liked Quebec to invest in creating a market for the compost and biofuels created from organic waste, and to help smaller municipalities provide home composting bins to their residents to reduce the amount of garbage going to landfills, where decomposing organic waste produces methane gas, a greenhouse gas.

mbeaudin@montrealgazette.com

Twitter: @moniquebeaudin

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