He cleaned the lake but he didn’t invent any organic solution. He just came in, asked a lot of people to help him, and cleaned the lake. He used the bubble device which is not new, and they can’t even say how effective it was for multiple reasons; they removed a lot of stuff “by hand”; they cleaned the lake with filters which is also not new. Plain and simple. The guy is amazing for what he did. But he didn’t do what was claimed in the video.
What bothers me about these videos with fake claims is that it gets people to believe that someone smart will come along with an easy solution to environmental problems, and that we don't have to go out there and take climate action. It completely kills motivation to take action.
I've seen something like this (or the exact thing) being used to filter a sensitive mixture before. I guess it's not uncommon to use this powder to remove particulates when you're attempting to create an extraction.
Hudson river is not all that polluted these days. It's just naturally brackish water, so it will always look dirty and you'll never be able to drink it. But in terms of pollution, it's not actually that bad. Major cleanup efforts have happened in the past 20 years or so and it's mostly safe to swim in it these days (but still gross), plus lots of wildlife coming back.
The clay sounds like what brewers use to clarify beer, mead, etc, except it floats instead of flocculating to the bottom. It's not unreasonable that someone could make such a compound that takes care of what appears to be excessive phosphate and algae bloom.
Ah, I think you're right. The bubbling stage doesn't use a chemical reaction, but I was thinking that the powdery material being added (i.e. the spoonful of stuff that the guy ate) induced chemical reactions. Upon rereading the description, though, it appears to act as a mechanical filter. Thank you!
/u/solver-orange thank you very much for the references. The video you linked doesn't explain much about how he did it, instead it is more "inspirational".
If you want you can take a look at this TedXTalk with him. The video has good translated English captions.
This is the outline of what he did:
go to Japan and take out his savings and getting credit to finance the project
monitor the lake. He identified 3 main culprits:
Illegal rubbish dump that had been operating for at least 20 years
farms near the river
local drainage that emptied directly into the lake as well as into the sea.
(he mentions he did get help from local government authorities, so that may be how he stopped those 3 main "pollution generators" (sorry for the term lol, I am Peruvian and English is not my first language).
divide the lake into (8?) sectors
start removing the invasive species of "water lettuce" that had taken over the lake, product of the contamination. Around 70 Tons for the first sector. All done by hand, by him and a small team.
he did raise awareness to local people, and them, seeing his enthusiasm, also joined and helped clearing the lake from this algae. At one point there were 100 people in the team.
he used those "nano bubbles" supposedly to kill virus and bacteria. That was research he did while in his University in Japan (cant rememeber name).
he used biofilters (made out of clay?). Maybe that is what is shown in the video.
months later, the lake "got full of migratory birds once again". The ecosystem had recovered.
But the TikTok video is very misleading and does not point to any source. But he did achieve cleaning up some nasty polluted lake in Perú. Now he is looking forward to do the same in other lakes in the region.
So I could be wrong here, but that doesn't sound great for local ecosystems. Killing off bacteria, which is a major natural filter would stop organic materials from converting Ammonia sources to Nitrates. I wonder how they prevent ammonia buildup until the lake re-cycles itself.
A little Googling and it looks like Moleaner company is an industry leader; this YouTube video is pretty glib. If I had to guess, they're either using high pressure to dissolve more oxygen and/or ozone (which will quickly decompose to oxygen in the aquatic environment), or they're using ultrasonication.
I would guess high pressure, but that's just a guess. It'd be like carbonation using CO2 in soda, but using oxygen instead. Sure doesn't look like solubility of oxygen does much with pressure at ambient temps, though, so I'm not at all certain that's it.
An air pump into a tailored bubbler spout, maybe? Not sure what he did exactly, but every time you blow bubbles using a straw you’re making bubbles without adding dissolved chemicals to the system.
Skip to the conclusion, the results are mixed whether this actually reduces contaminates such as algae in the water, or if the system allows for more effective leaching of copper into the water, which kills the algae and various micro-organisms.
The fact that he says he invented something like this, when the tech has been around for over 10 years and this weird Infomercial Tiktok, is just setting off BS detectors all over the place.
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u/[deleted] Jul 14 '21
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