Water Supply Research, Ideas and Innovations Using Microencapsulation to Control Algae Bloom
By: Lance Winslow
There are huge algae Blooms growing in many waters off the coasts, in the lakes and rivers near where high populations reside. Most of this is from Human use of chemicals to grow crops and fertilizers used in Golf Courses. It is a huge issue and here is a kicker in the drinking water in Las Vegas area Lake Powell;
http://www.torbay.scric.org/issues/forums.env.html
The way to cure the drinking water in Lake Powell and the drinking water outside of Wichita KS with a similar problem is to use microencapsulation technologies to allow slow release of bio-sensitive chemicals to reduce the Bloom. It was said that in a problem such as this; High nutrient levels in waterbodies eg pool in waterways with high N levels that the best solution to the issue is this: Trial zeolite application to take out N from water column will allow slow release for plant use. Macrophytes (eg pond biofilter) will use N off the zeolite Zeolite flocculant into water, then add microbes to break down algae blooms. But by using the microencapsulation technologies you can fix it without the complicated problems.
If the encapsulized chemicals are put under a charge they will stick to the bloom and slowly release and solve the problem. This is not saying that the watershed issues or BMPs associated with the local NPDES permits should not also be followed by point source discharges. There have been many very complex and expensive ideas to clean the Lake Powell issue, but I believe the issues are simplier than that, same with The Cheasapeak or even the Gulf Of Mexico off the coast of Naples and Ft Myers FL. Any questions on this issue please post a reply.
There are many companies working on this, here is one we researched in our study;
http://www.microteklabs.com/
Water is important and we must be careful to protect it and to fix these issues in superfund sites and in cases of our past lack of knowledge of the complex factors which make up our eco-system. Think about it.
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