Why Are 96,000,000 Black Balls on This Reservoir?

This is an amazing and educational video. It should please you no matter your politics. One major problem. This put out of business the birds that used to crap in the city water supply.

So would you support this in your reservoir?

 

There are trace amounts of chlorine added to the water to try to prevent disease.
There are also naturally trace amounts of bromide salts in the water. In the presence of sunlight, there's a reaction, and bromate forms in the water, which is not good for people.

I find it interesting how those balls seem to spontaneously stack. It almost looks like the crystal structure in a metal, with different domains.

The balls themselves are black because they contain carbon black. This not only absorbs light but also absorbs UV from the sun to prevent that UV from degrading the plastic and causing it to become brittle and break into pieces.

 

This was and is a very smart Idea, I remember when they first did this and everyone thought it was stupid.

 

Kaz, but, do you get the purpose of millions of those black balls?

 

I learned of it today. i felt it could be of interest. We all drink water.

 

Uh....evaporation control? Didnt watch the video.

 

Wonderful video. But nope, not over evaporation.

 

Big water with the sun shimmering across it, lot's of trees, and few manmade structures except a road to get there is a wonderful place to be.

 

What I thought was most surprising is that those black balls actually keep the water just a little bit cooler.
They most certainly must be raising the surrounding air temperature though.

One idea might be to incorporate silica nanoparticles into the plastic. That might give the plastic a more grey color and help reflect light so that it does not create as much heat.

 

But they're certain that plain old carbon black is inactive and does not produce any carcinogens. So there would have to be testing again with the silica nanoparticles embedded. And as always, what is the cost? Could be better.

 

Silica is already a food additive. Look at the ingredients in your table salt some time.

 

Yeah, but being embedded in plastic the behavior is unknown. Could be an improvement, but maybe not. Murphy lurks everywhere.

 

The only problem I could possibly foresee is during the recycling process if it went through a plastic chipper, the dust might get in the air and that may be very bad for occupational health exposure of the recycling workers.

Nothing bad is going to happen while it's in the plastic or interacting with the water.