Usually when we say “FOG” people relate it to the lowest lying clouds in the winters or may be the condensed form of water vapours lying low to the surface of the earth, due to which there’s a visibility problem, there’s traffic disruption and a sort of spooky horror movie effect is caused around. These are further categorised into Radiation fog, Advection fog, Ground fog, Evaporation fog or steam fog, Frontal fog, Ice fog, Freezing Fog, Hail fog, and Upslope fog, apart from of course the artificial kind of fog that we generate artificially.
But it isn’t that FOG, which we intend to discuss. While of course that fog is also related to water, since it is formed by water vapours only, but our problem is a different kind of FOG, which is not formed in water, but rather floats above water. Yes, you guessed it right, we mean – Fat, Oil and Grease – FOG, which is essentially a part of our kitchen waste and often lands up in our sewage water.
This FOG is sewage causes nightmare to the sewage department of the city, because it is liquid when it is hot, in lower temperature it solidifies and often chokes the sewage pipelines.
When the same FOG reaches a waterbody (drain, canal, pond, lakes or rivers), being lighter than water it floats above the water surface, forming a thin film to laminate the entire surface. And this film reflect the sunlight obstructing its entrance or penetration in to the water. This reflection of sunlight naturally blocks the photons supply to water putting the natural process of photosynthesis to a halt, which means the natural production of dissolved oxygen (DO) will cease to happen, suffocating the aquatic life to death.
Just one simple step of pouring the left over oil in your kitchen sink – and look at the disaster it creates!
And then there’s a chain reactions of ripple effects of sewage addition to the waterbodies,
Due to lack of DO production and suffocation of the aerobic aquatic life, the anaerobic life will propagate leading the anaerobic digestion, which will produce the hydrogen sulphide as a by-product, causing a massive foul smell in the vicinity.
The flow gets compromised creating a breeding ground for mosquitoes, which in turn would increase the threat for vector borne disease like malaria, dengue, chikungunya and what not.
The water colour will get darker by the day, from natural to dark green to grey to black, almost like a burnt automobile engine oil.
And then there’ll be algal bloom and water weeds to compliment the worsening situation of the water decay.
Anyways, so we are no discussing the sad stories here, so let quickly move on to the solution side.
Is there a way out?
How is it sorted out in Cownomics Treatment?
When the oxygen is separated from oxygen compounds due to electron exchange and the chemical decomposition of the pollutants happen, this oxygen first adds to the Dissolved Oxygen (DO) levels and later it is released to the surface after the holding capacity of water gets saturated.
These bubbles start to breach the thin film of FOG on the surface. And soon they surpass the tensile strength of the film, and when this happens these oxygen bubbles start to burst in the air. This bubble burst creates a puncture or a hole in the surface film and the sunlight is allowed to re-enter water through this hole.
Moreover this broken down film get eventually converted in to emulsion leading to dispersion and finally it gets broken down to such smaller particles that they get consumes in the aqua-ecology through the natural process of digestion & consumption due to metabolic activities of the single-celled organisms in the micro-biota of the wetland ecology.
