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The Water Abundance XPrize winner makes water from air

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Re: The Water Abundance XPrize winner makes water from air

#111

Post by tapvt »

joshe wrote: post #104

If it all works this would be useful. (Contary to all the negative comments about how pointless this is.) Not a water expert, but here's where this reported price ranks from some googling: Tap water in California: $.0005 / liter [1] XPrize winner: $.02 / liter Water truck delivery in CA: $.01 - $.05 / liter [2] Desalination: $.05 - $.30 / liter [3] Wholesale bottled water: $.30 / liter [4] Walmart bottled water: $.68…

For places without existing water infrastructure, however, doesn't the technology seem like it may have some appeal?

Not everywhere has tap water. Some places don't have an aquifer suitable for drilling a well. Other places don't even have a road network suitable for the delivery of water by truck in an economical manner (or at all).

Beyond that, drawing water from the air has benefit in that it does not negatively impact a local aquifer which might already be over-drawn. What is the additional economic benefit per liter of that? That could be subtracted from the $0.02 / liter cost if you care to look at more than just the immediate bottom line.

Re: The Water Abundance XPrize winner makes water from air

#112

Post by joshe »

tapvt wrote: post #111
joshe wrote: post #104

If it all works this would be useful. (Contary to all the negative comments about how pointless this is.) Not a water expert, but here's where this reported price ranks from some googling: Tap water in California: $.0005 / liter [1] XPrize winner: $.02 / liter Water truck delivery in CA: $.01 - $.05 / liter [2] Desalination: $.05 - $.30 / liter [3] Wholesale bottled water: $.30 / liter [4] Walmart bottled water: $.68…

For places without existing water infrastructure, however, doesn't the technology seem like it may have some appeal? Not everywhere has tap water. Some places don't have an aquifer suitable for drilling a well. Other places don't even have a road network suitable for the delivery of water by truck in an economical manner (or at all). Beyond that, drawing water from the air has benefit in that it does not negatively i…

Totally agree, just edited to make myself clearer. I was actually reacting to all the negative comments.

Re: The Water Abundance XPrize winner makes water from air

#113

Post by jessriedel »

Sephr wrote: post #95
mchannon wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At 100% humidity, sure. If it's raining, it takes no work to get wet. I have a unit in my garage that can actually produce water at less than 10% relative humidity, moves a lot more air so it has more chances to actually capture the water, and smokes these other units under price/performance, particularly when tested in a desert. It's not a dehumidifier-based system. It's also cheaper to build. Email me for details.

Details I received from emailing mchannon: > Thanks for reaching out. Mine uses a deliquescent salt, which requires no energy to absorb water from the air. It's pretty messy, but does the job. Getting the water back out is where the energy is required, and this is non-trivial, but still far better than those dehumidifier approaches, which are unfortunately the perpetual motion machines of our era.

Isnt the assumption here that he didn't want to share this publicly? It seems like a betrayl of trust, regardless of the merits.

Re: The Water Abundance XPrize winner makes water from air

#114

Post by romwell »

nevlis wrote: post #105
mamon wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> this thing only makes water when you probably don't need water. Living in California recently I constantly see the weather forecast claiming 70-90% humidity and yet the area is basically a dessert with almost no rain. I suppose there are many more areas in the world like that.

Sounds like a delicious place to live

You might think that, but the illusion will break fast if you actually move here. The inland can be supper dry, so much you could almost hear it dinning in your ears. No surprise so many water conservation efforts have been launched here!

Re: The Water Abundance XPrize winner makes water from air

#115

Post by Digory »

extrapickles wrote: post #101

It looks like the winner is a standard dehumidifier bolted to a standard biomass generator that has a condenser from a high efficiency furnace bolted on to it. So the only "magic" they are doing is also capturing the water vapor from the generators combustion. While somewhat novel in combining it all, its all off the shelf tech. What I don't like is the lack of good hard numbers in its performance in a range of condi…

The other magic is financial. My bet is that they assume free biomass. Once you assume input cost = $.00, things look easy.

And, to be fair, maybe this thing makes sense after a hurricane. There's lots of "free" biomass laying around in an area of extraordinary transportation costs.

But it's obviously not a solution to the "water problem" in rural, impoverished areas. You'd need to include the price of a renewable forest or palm plantation (for coconut shells), or the huge solar array.

Re: The Water Abundance XPrize winner makes water from air

#116

Post by aidenn0 »

xgbi wrote: post #109
ortusdux wrote: post #15

Here is the website for one of the winners: http://www.skysource.org/ From what I can glean online, the 150 gal/day unit costs $18k usd + $150-$300 in electricity a month if run 24/7 at $0.10Kwh. Ignoring electrical costs, it would take 1581 days to reach $0.02/liter. In that time you would use up $7.5-15k in electricity. The best estimate I could find is that the average US household uses 240 gal a day. A friend of…

Are you serious? 240gal/day is 900 liters/day! We are four people living in a house & garden in france and I used 70m3 (70000 liters) last year. That would be about 190L/d or 50gal/day, 5 times less. Where do you dump so much water in the US?

My math says that's about 2 HCF (hundred cubic feet, which is what our water is billed as) per month? That's considerably lower than the typical water usage in drought-ridden Santa Barbara of 11HCF. It's also double the baseline usage of 4HCF (after 4HCF rates go up).

With 3 adults and 4 children in my house we used 4-6HCF per month with no garden (when we moved in the irrigation system used about 12HCF per month on its own, we landscaped the yard to eliminate the need for outside watering).

Re: The Water Abundance XPrize winner makes water from air

#117

Post by scythe »

mamon wrote: post #82
mchannon wrote: post #62

Pretty disappointed with their choice of winner. Using refrigeration to maintain a dewpoint means that this appliance is pretty impractical below 50% relative humidity. Or in other words, this thing only makes water when you probably don't need water. Blow some nice 90 deg F 20% humid air past those coils, and you'll be blowing out a lot of 80 deg F 25% humid air out on the other side, getting bupkis for actual produ…

>> this thing only makes water when you probably don't need water. Living in California recently I constantly see the weather forecast claiming 70-90% humidity and yet the area is basically a dessert with almost no rain. I suppose there are many more areas in the world like that.

That happens because there are many hills which tend to spawn rainclouds when the humidity hits a certain threshold. So while there is moisture in the air it mostly falls in the mountains. Other places with this pattern include e.g. Morocco or the Snake River Valley in Idaho.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_island

(This is also why people keep building houses in fire danger zones: the forests have a nice climate, but they burn. The flat areas don't burn, but they're inhospitable.)

Re: The Water Abundance XPrize winner makes water from air

#118

Post by Sephr »

jessriedel wrote: post #113
Sephr wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Details I received from emailing mchannon: > Thanks for reaching out. Mine uses a deliquescent salt, which requires no energy to absorb water from the air. It's pretty messy, but does the job. Getting the water back out is where the energy is required, and this is non-trivial, but still far better than those dehumidifier approaches, which are unfortunately the perpetual motion machines of our era.

Isnt the assumption here that he didn't want to share this publicly? It seems like a betrayl of trust, regardless of the merits.

I never told him that I would keep his correspondence private, nor did he ask me to do so.

Here is the entire email chain between myself and mchannon: https://go.eligrey.com/t/mchannon-email

Re: The Water Abundance XPrize winner makes water from air

#119

Post by azernik »

metaphor wrote: post #23
azernik wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The company itself has a website at http://www.skysource.org/

...which tells us nothing of their XPrize submission.

It's probably 2-4 of their higher-capacity models put together.

Re: The Water Abundance XPrize winner makes water from air

#120

Post by jessriedel »

Sephr wrote: post #118
jessriedel wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isnt the assumption here that he didn't want to share this publicly? It seems like a betrayl of trust, regardless of the merits.

I never told him that I would keep his correspondence private, nor did he ask me to do so. Here is the entire email chain between myself and mchannon: https://go.eligrey.com/t/mchannon-email

That's why I said "assumption", i.e., from the context that he didn't post on HN but would respond to private messages.
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