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Google open sources solar atmospheric water generator

github.com

121–130 of 246 posts

Re: Google open sources solar atmospheric water generator

#121

Are there any consumer-grade atmospheric solar water generators on the market right now? I did a very quick search and didn't find anything. Is there anything like this that people can buy right now?

You could buy a few solar panels, an inverter, a dehumidifier, and a water filter and be fine. The problem is sizing the power generation and dehumidifier to match and generate an amount of water meaningful to you.

Regardless you need quite a bit of solar to get a decent amount of water.

Re: Google open sources solar atmospheric water generator

#122

Check out Thunderf00t's videos cricising solar water collectors, e.g.: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc7WqVMCABg - Zero Mass Water: BUSTED! "Honestly, it drives me crazy how many people have reinvented the dehumidifier, put a solar panel on it, and the media has danced around like theyve just saved the world!" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPvXnmBIO7o - Self-filling water bottle: BUSTED! " The fact that its t…

Thunderf00t is hit and miss. Some videos are scepticism, small mindedness, long pessimistic rant without substance and no debunking

Re: Google open sources solar atmospheric water generator

#123
post #120

Check out Thunderf00t's videos cricising solar water collectors, e.g.: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc7WqVMCABg - Zero Mass Water: BUSTED! "Honestly, it drives me crazy how many people have reinvented the dehumidifier, put a solar panel on it, and the media has danced around like theyve just saved the world!" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPvXnmBIO7o - Self-filling water bottle: BUSTED! " The fact that its t…

I will never check out a Thunderfoot video. He is a hateful pitiful man.

He's generally not wrong. But I agree, his approach is pretty obnoxious.

Re: Google open sources solar atmospheric water generator

#124

Check out Thunderf00t's videos cricising solar water collectors, e.g.: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc7WqVMCABg - Zero Mass Water: BUSTED! "Honestly, it drives me crazy how many people have reinvented the dehumidifier, put a solar panel on it, and the media has danced around like theyve just saved the world!" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPvXnmBIO7o - Self-filling water bottle: BUSTED! " The fact that its t…

Dehumidifiers aren't what's thermodynamically impossible, of course; Fontus was just making quantitative performance claims that were thermodynamically impossible about how small their system would be and how little energy it would use.

You don't need to sink to citing YouTubers to figure out how much water air contains. You can just consult a standard psychrometric chart: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PsychrometricChart.S...

You can see from that chart that at, for example, 20 degrees and 30% relative humidity (which, if you're not aware, is pretty dry), you have about 5 mg of water per gram of air, or about 5 grams of water per kg of air, which is about 0.8 cubic meters (1.2 g/liter). So if you want to produce 10 liters of water per day for your family, you need to run 2,000 cubic meters of air through your dehumidifier. (Or a bit more because you can't reduce it to 0% humidity.)

That might sound like a lot, but it's per day, so it works out to 49 cfm, which is not "big fans and lots of power". If we're talking about a 300 mm square aperture it's 260 mm/s of airflow, a breeze you can barely feel, which requires a totally insignificant amount of power compared to the actual refrigeration involved. This is not going to fit nicely on your bicycle like in the fraudulent Fontus videos but it is entirely reasonable as a household appliance.

Solar electricity is free if you aren't using it for something else.

As for bacterial growth and filtering, yeah, that's a real design constraint, and it's one that HVAC systems have fallen down on in the past with disastrous results, but it's not some kind of unsolved engineering problem. Every air conditioner, sea voyage, and water tower deals with it. Here in Argentina just about every house has a rooftop drinking-water tank, where we control bacterial growth with chlorination, by impregnating the tank plastic with bacteriostatic agents, and by making the tanks opaque so algae can't grow. Thousands of years ago, mariners dealt with it by dropping a silver coin in each amphora of drinking water.

It would be a more difficult problem if a dehumidifier were warm and moist, but actually it's cold and moist.

As for the relative costs of tankers and electricity, well, that varies depending on where you are. Around here supply chains are so unreliable that I'd hate to rely on a weekly delivery from a water tanker in order to not die of thirst in 48 hours. (Fortunately, I live a few kilometers from the biggest river in the world. Water is not a problem here, though in places pollution is.)

Re: Google open sources solar atmospheric water generator

#125
post #116

Check out Thunderf00t's videos cricising solar water collectors, e.g.: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc7WqVMCABg - Zero Mass Water: BUSTED! "Honestly, it drives me crazy how many people have reinvented the dehumidifier, put a solar panel on it, and the media has danced around like theyve just saved the world!" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPvXnmBIO7o - Self-filling water bottle: BUSTED! " The fact that its t…

> in places where the air is wet, it rains, and you don't need it. - Rain water collected in ponds/rivers may be contaminated/infested. - Lack of fresh water in the ocean/islands is also an issue. The two things that are available almost everywhere are air and sun.

Rainwater cisterns are a viable option if you have rain.

Re: Google open sources solar atmospheric water generator

#126

Estimated $150 price point. Requires an electric motor to circulate air. What is the intersection of people who a) can afford an expenditure of $150, b) have reliable access to electricity and can pay for it, and c) can't get their hands on five liters of clean water a day?

Many people don't have good access to clean water, over 2B according to the repo's readme. Those people probably cannot afford $150, but the goal of the project wasn't $150, it was lower. The unit is supposed to be solar powered, so access to electricity isn't strictly necessary, in the sense of being able to connect to the grid. They just need sunlight. There is a sweet spot of cost, where those who need it can't af…

Did you look at the presentation deck in the linked repository? It clearly says "$150 target price point"

It also clearly shows an electric circulating fan in the diagrams.

Re: Google open sources solar atmospheric water generator

#127
post #124

Check out Thunderf00t's videos cricising solar water collectors, e.g.: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc7WqVMCABg - Zero Mass Water: BUSTED! "Honestly, it drives me crazy how many people have reinvented the dehumidifier, put a solar panel on it, and the media has danced around like theyve just saved the world!" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPvXnmBIO7o - Self-filling water bottle: BUSTED! " The fact that its t…

Dehumidifiers aren't what's thermodynamically impossible, of course; Fontus was just making quantitative performance claims that were thermodynamically impossible about how small their system would be and how little energy it would use. You don't need to sink to citing YouTubers to figure out how much water air contains. You can just consult a standard psychrometric chart: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Psyc…

You also need power to take the heat away that is created when the water in the air turns into a liquid. Best case you need to cool for about 0.7kwh per litre of water you make. That means for your 10 litre example you need best case 7kwh. That is a decent sized solar array and if you have any inefficiencies in your heat pump setup it gets much worse. Also you assume per day - solar only works during the day so you need storage as well so your system can work during the night.

Re: Google open sources solar atmospheric water generator

#128
Open sources is another word for "abandons".

Israel has made a massive desalination plant, to turn salt water into potable water and it's no easy task. If they could have taken water from the atmosphere I'm sure they would have tried.

It's a pipe dream so far.

Re: Google open sources solar atmospheric water generator

#129
post #125
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in places where the air is wet, it rains, and you don't need it. - Rain water collected in ponds/rivers may be contaminated/infested. - Lack of fresh water in the ocean/islands is also an issue. The two things that are available almost everywhere are air and sun.

Rainwater cisterns are a viable option if you have rain.

And if you dont?

Re: Google open sources solar atmospheric water generator

#130
post #90

Estimated $150 price point. Requires an electric motor to circulate air. What is the intersection of people who a) can afford an expenditure of $150, b) have reliable access to electricity and can pay for it, and c) can't get their hands on five liters of clean water a day?

You can use solar energy.

Perhaps so, but not in the design being discussed here.
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