The scarcity of usable water and the growing water shortage, though at points related to global warming, is a separate issue. It should rank with the effects of peak oil as the top issues for the future of the world economy. Unfortunately, neither peak oil nor water shortage has sustained discussion from the world’s public media. There is a real danger that the economic effects, which are already being felt and will increase dramatically in the next twenty years (or less), will come as something of a ‘surprise’ to the public and even to the businesses that depend on water and oil.

One of the messages of the Lloyds report is that businesses routinely underestimate their dependence on a reliable and relatively inexpensive supply of huge volumes of water. There are many figures used for illustration: A chunk of cheese requires more than 2,500 liters (660 gallons) to produce it; a loaf of bread needs 440 liters (116 gallons). Water flows into, through, and out of most manufacturing processes – often in huge quantities. As a rule, this water needs to be fresh, that is, not dirty or sea-water. Yet only 3% of the world’s water is fresh, and less than 1% is available for human consumption (potable water). This water is unevenly distributed with neither deserts nor rain-forests having large human populations, but rather the modestly water-endowed middle regions having the greatest need. This is particularly true for most of Asia, where huge populations have already begun to vie for access to relatively scarce water resources. These are also the areas of Asia (China, India, Vietnam, Thailand, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia) with the most dramatic economic growth.

The Lloyds report outlines four key points:

1. Global water resources are under threat and businesses are affected. Companies are facing a physical shortage of water, which in turn, will lead to new regulatory and operational consequences. Water is, perhaps, the world’s ultimate shared resource. (A good line.)
2. Different types of businesses face different threat levels. Agriculture and beverage industries are obviously affected, but they are not alone.
3. Water is different than other natural resources – it needs to be managed on a local, basin or national scale. The supply of water is in constant change, drought one day, flood the next, and different year to year everywhere and anywhere. Business strategies need to look to wide geographical considerations to deal with water shortage.
4. Tools and approaches for managing business risk from water scarcity are already being developed. Water shortage is being taken seriously by many organizations – the U.N., World Wildlife Federation, World Economic Forum, the Nature Conservancy, and many others are engaged in discussing, studying, and devising strategies. Join them.

For individuals, it doesn’t take much imagination to understand that if business is affected dramatically by water shortage, so is employment. Right now businesses relocate mostly to cut labor costs or taxes. In the not so distant future, some will be moving to find adequate water.

Of course, there will be many who just add this to their list of ‘impending crises,’ which don’t need to be taken seriously until the crisis happens. Good luck with that.

Lloyd’s CEO Richard Ward said the report highlights the seriousness of the issue for insurers and the wider business market.

“This report is not simply for the insurance market, or solely concerned with the physical risks of too much, or too little water. It covers a wide variety of issues relating to water use for today’s risk manager. How confident are you in your ability to maintain a steady supply of water? Could the record of your suppliers on water management damage your brand or reputation? What new regulations could be imposed on how your company manages water.”

[Source: Lloyd’s Report]

The key to the process is using an organic ligand, an ion or molecule that binds to metal atoms, to coat an underlying nanomaterials in the form of nanorods or nanocrystals.
The ligands are then replaced with chalcogenides (typically compounds with sulfur, selenium, or tellurium) for example, copper sulphide. The end result is a nanocomposite that combines the underlying shapes and structures with the properties of the material bonded to it.

So far the research team has identified 20 materials that can be composited in this way. They expect to find many more so that the process becomes a ‘mix and match on demand.’

Another important point in favor of this process, besides relative simplicity, is that it is scalable. In manufacturing terms that means a little or a lot can be manufactured by the same basic process (with obvious allowances for handling and processing large quantities). This is what will make many nanomaterials commercially viable.

[Source: Lawrence Berkeley Labs]

For those interested in a brief technical description there’s

In summary, we demonstrated for the first time the feasibility of graphene synthesis on cubic ?-SiC. A very simple procedure for obtaining graphene on the cheap, commercially available ?-SiC/Si wafers of large diameters represents a huge step toward technological application of this material as the synthesis is compatible with industrial mass production. The quality of graphene overlayers was characterized by a number of experimental techniques, indicating very weak interaction with the substrate, crucial for preservation of the astonishing intrinsic properties of graphene. The ability to grow large single-crystal domains is a major target of graphene growth. Despite lattice mismatching, the graphene growth is shown to be guided along the [110] crystallographic direction of the SiC(001) substrate, which might also encourage the formation of reasonable large domains of single-crystal graphene.

[Source: American Chemical Society]

If the promise of nanotechnology is to be fulfilled, nanoparticles will have to be able to make something of themselves. An important advance towards this goal has been achieved by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) who have found a simple and yet powerfully robust way to induce nanoparticles to assemble themselves into complex arrays.
…
“We’ve demonstrated a simple yet versatile approach to precisely controlling the spatial distribution of readily available nanoparticles over multiple length scales, ranging from the nano to the macro,” says Ting Xu, a polymer scientist who led this project and who holds joint appointments with Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division and the University of California, Berkeley’s Departments of Materials Sciences and Engineering, and Chemistry.
…
Nano-sized particles – bits of matter a few billionths of a meter in size, or more than a hundred times smaller than the stuff of today’s microtechnologies – display highly coveted properties not found in macroscopic materials, including optical, electronic, magnetic, etc. The promise of nanotechnololgy is that exploiting these unique properties on a commercial scale could yield such “game-changers” as sustainable, clean and cheap energy, and the creation on demand of new materials with properties tailored to meet specific needs. Realizing this promise starts with nanoparticles being able to organize themselves into complex structures and hierarchical patterns, similar to what nature routinely accomplishes with proteins.
…
For this study, Xu and her colleagues added [PDP or OPAP] small molecules to various blends of nanoparticles, such as cadmium selenide and lead sulfide, mixed in with a commercial block copolymer – polystyrene-block-poly (4-vinyl pyridine). While she and her group worked with light and heat, she says other stimuli, such as pH, could also be used to reposition small molecules and their nanoparticle partners along block copolymer formations. Strategic substitutions of different types of stimulus-responsive small molecules could serve as a mechanism for structural fine-tuning or for incorporating specific functional properties into nanocomposites.

“Bring together the right basic components – nanoparticles, polymers and small molecules – stimulate the mix with a combination of heat, light or some other factors, and these components will assemble into sophisticated structures or patterns,” says Xu. “It is not dissimilar from how nature does it.”

[Source: Berkeley Lab]

There are many other approaches to nano-manufacture – using nanoparticles to make nano-structures. In all cases, the difficult first step is exerting some control. Some researchers are using highly controlled environments (magnetism, light) and controlled nanoparticles compositions; others are looking to natural models. It’s really a continuum of approaches, and it’s not a horse race to see which approach ‘wins.’ In all likelihood, there will be successes of different kinds and with different methods.