Water; H2O, Aqua, Dihydrogen Monoxide
Life could not exist without it, of course. Millions of years ago, a cloud of hot gas surrounded the earth’s crust. Imagine such a cloud, blocking the scorching effect of the sun’s rays and causing the earth’s temperature to drop to almost below boiling point. When the temperature dropped to sufficient conditions, these clouds condensed and began to fall on the earth as precipitation. It filled every gap it found and the earth was covered with water. The salts and dissolved minerals found on the earth’s surface gave rise to hydrocarbons in the process, and thus the foundations of life. Although it is difficult to summarize in a few lines, the existence of water on earth has such a story.
This is how life began, first in water.
In a world with limited oxygen, the newly evolving animals had to be as efficient as possible. So the first animals emerged in these deep waters.
Life began and evolved in water. Water is therefore an essential resource for all living things. Water has been a limited resource since the formation of the earth, in the beginning. And it was in a constant state of motion. We call this motion or cycle the cycle of water in nature. For millions of years, water has been shaping the lives of living things through a natural cycle. The water mass that evaporates from the oceans and surface waters returns to the earth as precipitation after encountering a cold layer in the atmosphere, and returns to the oceans and other water sources by incorporating many impurities it encounters both on the surface and underground. As we look at this cycle that has been going on for millions of years, I think we will witness this cycle of water in the universe as long as the world turns.
When we think about the place of water in our lives, we often remember its share in our vital activities in terms of direct use. However, indirectly or directly, we use water as an alternative in industry, agriculture, medicine, that is, in every kind of production or service-oriented process you can think of. In our presentations in the industry, we often ask why we use water; we talk about its immediate availability in nature, its cost and its physical properties. But in reality, can we find water ready to use today? It is very difficult nowadays…
Today, almost 97% of the world’s water resources are salty and located in the oceans. Most of the rest is made up of glaciers and groundwater. In other words, we are now able to directly use fresh water resources in amounts that can be expressed in thousandths. And since these resources have been exposed to serious industrial pollution in the last 50 years, it is not possible to use them for our purposes unless they undergo serious treatment and purification. Therefore, the cost is no longer as low as it used to be. As for its physical properties, we can say that water is exposed to environmental influences in the process, and as I just mentioned, it may need clarification or a complete overhaul of its content. So water is no longer a cheap, readily available commodity with readily available physical properties.
There is a huge amount of resource utilization in industry. No matter how economical the current technologies are designed to be, the amount of resources consumed is astonishing to someone who has no direct connection with industry. A numerical illustration:
In the beginning, living things were very small. For billions of years, all life on Earth was microscopic and consisted mostly of single cells. Then suddenly, about 570 million years ago, complex organisms appeared, including soft, sponge-like animals with bodies up to a meter long. Organisms of this size and complexity lived only in deep water for 15 million years. If we make these creatures that can take advantage of the sheltered and stable temperature changes of the oceans, we use 1,700 liters of water to produce 1 T-shirt and 10,800 liters of water for 1 pair of jeans. We use 16,600 liters of water to produce a pair of shoes. In other words, if we consider that the world population is increasing at such a high rate, it is clear how economically limited water resources must be spent to provide the necessary services for this population. For this reason, countries are now putting “zero liquid dischage”, that is, zero liquid waste technologies on the table as a country policy.
On the other hand, there is an increasing population and accordingly an increasing need for water both for human activities and for the processes mentioned above. For now, the industry is trying to meet this need by desalinizing the water from the oceans. However, the wastes of these technologies are overly concentrated and tend to disrupt the habitat of the environment where they are given. This necessitates the development of a common water policy among countries.
Many scientific studies on water are still ongoing. Our priorities are to use it more efficiently or to use it repeatedly for its intended purpose and recycle it. In fact, there are studies where science and meaning are examined together in a way that could be the subject of a conference in itself. For example, Japanese scientist Masaru Emoto’s studies on the forms crystals take according to sound frequency, even though they have been labeled as pseudoscience by scientific circles, show that humanity’s search for meaning in the meaning and physical structure of water is still going on in depth.
We have talked about the physical properties and meaning of water. Now let us dwell on the spiritual meaning of water for societies. Almost every religion emphasizes the importance of water for humanity. In Christianity, water is used in the baptism ceremony, and water is considered sacred in order to die in the old life and wake up clean and pure to a new life. In Judaism, the vitalizing, life-giving aspect of water is also emphasized. In Islam, the Qur’an itself states that everything was created from water (verse 30 of the Qur’an). Both in monotheistic religions and in different beliefs, water has always found a sacred place in social life. Therefore, we can think that an improvement made to water is indirectly made to the whole universe and humanity. In other words, it is seen that the services rendered to water also have an equivalent in the world of meaning.
So, improving water quality means serving humanity and therefore serving everything created. This imposes great responsibilities on people and especially those of us working in the field of water technologies. Our elders did not say in vain, “Be saintly like water” to those who offer water…
Alper Tunga DOST
Chief Sales and Marketing Officer
