{"id":309,"date":"2022-09-26T13:51:42","date_gmt":"2022-09-26T17:51:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/SustainabilitySuppers\/?p=309"},"modified":"2022-12-12T12:52:06","modified_gmt":"2022-12-12T17:52:06","slug":"technology-to-make-our-water-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/sustainabilitysuppers\/technology-to-make-our-water-better\/","title":{"rendered":"Technology to make our water better"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Joseph Goodwill, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Rhode Island, researches water treatment methods designed to improve water quality when affected by extreme events such as a pandemic or hurricane. Goodwill\u2019s solution: an antifragile approach to water treatment; that is, technology that actually improves<\/em> water\u2019s performance under volatile conditions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To illustrate: If you were going to send someone a mug, you would wrap it in bubble wrap and place it in a box, maybe write \u201cFragile\u201d on it to lessen potential damage from the stress the mug would undergo in the shipping process. This is making it more resilient, which is not a bad thing. But what if you could do something to the mug itself to make it better as a result of being dropped or shaken, Goodwill asks? That\u2019s making it antifragile. \u201cNow it\u2019s obviously difficult to imagine a mug like that,\u201d Goodwill says, \u201cbut we could imagine it from a material science standpoint, looking at materials that get better when stressed.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cWe\u2019re no longer in a position to use water once and discharge it. What worked for the last 100 years isn\u2019t going to work for the next 100.\u201d<\/blockquote>Joseph Goodwill, assistant professor, civil and environmental engineering<\/cite><\/div><\/section>\n\n\n

\u201cWe do this with steel. When we strain a piece of steel \u2014 put some stress on it to bend it \u2014 by bending the beam, there\u2019s actually an increase in the amount of load it can handle. So it gets stronger by stressing it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAntifragility is a paradigm that could apply to all sorts of water treatment technologies or water system designs,\u201d says Goodwill. \u201cThe hope is professors and researchers might find ways to apply it to their local systems.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Goodwill\u2019s work has attracted international attention. He was nominated for an Emerging Investigator Award from the Royal Society of Chemistry. The award recognizes researchers whose work has the potential to influence water research and technology.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Goodwill\u2019s expertise also was requested by the Providence Water Supply Board at the beginning of the pandemic when the city\u2019s water tanks registered unsafe levels of trihalomethane, a chemical formed when natural organic material, such as decayed vegetation, reacts with chlorine in the water treatment process. Goodwill and his students were measuring one tank\u2019s trihalomethane levels. \u201cWe were doing this real-world experiment where we were seeing the impact a global pandemic had on this very specific component of our water system.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Providence shut down due a shelter-in-place order, the trihalomethane levels grew, a potentially dangerous development as some TMHs can be carcinogenic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cProvidence had the tools in place to deal with this, so we tracked the utilization of these tools,\u201d Goodwill says. \u201cThey installed a trihalomethane-stripping aeration system in the tank just prior to the black swan event of the COVID-19 pandemic. We generated data in real-time on how a novel virus affected the levels of trihalomethane in a water storage tank. It was an interesting example of how a water system performs under stress.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aeration in the storage tank reduced the TMHs to acceptable levels. Communities not as prepared as Providence might be candidates for Goodwill\u2019s antifragility approach, which addresses real-world problems and anticipates future challenges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs the land grant university in Rhode Island, I think one of our charges is to support our neighbors and help them with their problems. We have to be prepared to solve problems,\u201d Goodwill says. \u201cWe\u2019re no longer in a position to use water once and discharge it. What worked for the last 100 years isn\u2019t going to work for the next 100.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 Marybeth Reilly-McGreen<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joseph Goodwill, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Rhode Island, researches water treatment methods designed to improve water quality when affected by extreme events such as a pandemic or hurricane. Goodwill\u2019s solution: an antifragile approach to water treatment; that is, technology that actually improves water\u2019s performance under volatile conditions.  […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1962,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/sustainabilitysuppers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/sustainabilitysuppers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/sustainabilitysuppers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/sustainabilitysuppers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1962"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/sustainabilitysuppers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/sustainabilitysuppers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":470,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/sustainabilitysuppers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309\/revisions\/470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/sustainabilitysuppers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/sustainabilitysuppers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/sustainabilitysuppers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}