Getting water from milk cms . groupeditors . com
From left : Chris Ngwendu ( Nestlé Mossel Bay manager ), Gugile Nkwinti ( minister of water affairs and sanitation ), and Helene Budlinger Artieda ( Swiss ambassador ).
A Mossel Bay milk factory has revolutionised its production processes by switching to an approach that will see them reduce reliance on municipal water .
The Nestlé factory , which produces various milk products , including Nespray and Nido , will now rely on milk water by evaporating the water in the cow ’ s milk processed on site . This will then be captured and reused in the factory .
The zero-water manufacturing site , inaugurated by Water and Sanitation Minister Gugile Nkwinti , is the latest branch of
the Swiss multinational to implement this system — under the title of Project ZerEau .
Factories in Mexico , India , and China are already on similar systems . The company has invested R84-million to install and implement the new system . Nestlé South Africa corporate affairs director Ravi Pillay says that a further five factories were in the process of transitioning to the system , with 14 more factories employing certain elements in their processes . According to Pillay , the milk being processed at the plant could contain up to 88 % water , though the system is currently recovering around 65 %.
“ The plant processes fresh cow ’ s milk through an evaporation process ,” Pillay explains . “ The evaporated water is captured and treated through reverse osmosis , then remineralised and used for various applications within the facility . Water is also recycled by using anaerobic digester technology coupled with ultra-filtration and reverse osmosis systems .”
Through this , the factory saves about 467 tankers ’ worth of water monthly , compared to its usage before it began implementing water-reduction plans in 2009 . “ Municipal water is still required for various day-to-day uses , such as employee consumption and fire systems . The municipal usage is dependent on the volumes of milk processed and water recovered .”
Water from air
Researchers from the University of California , Berkeley have discovered a unique way to extract clean , pure water out of air . This discovery could save millions of people living in waterstarved regions across the world .
Scientists managed to successfully extract clean , drinkable water at very low humidity and at a low cost using their newly built nextgeneration water harvester . Omar Yaghi , the James and Neeltje Tretter chair in chemistry at UC Berkeley and inventor of the technology , says “ There is nothing like this . It operates at ambient temperature with ambient sunlight , and with no additional energy input you can collect water in the desert . This laboratory-to-desert journey allowed us to really turn water harvesting from an interesting phenomenon into a science .”
Where it all started
In October 2017 , scientists created a prototype water harvester , which sucked water out of the air using just sunlight as energy . Their initial discovery led them to create an even larger water extractor machine , bringing them closer to their goal of providing lifelong clean and drinkable water to people living in water-scarce areas .
Yaghi , a faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , and his team are set to report the results of the water-collecting harvester ’ s first field test in an edition of the scientific journal , Science Advances .
The trial was conducted in Scottsdale , where the relative humidity drops as low as eight per cent a day . Despite low humidity levels , the harvester demonstrated its ability to extract water from even the scarcest places , after scientists added more of the machine ’ s water absorber — a highly porous material comprising a metal-organic framework , or MOF .
Omar Yaghi , a faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory .
Today at Berkeley Lab
1.5 l billion
The number of litres lost in
South Africa every year through leaks .