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Google open sources solar atmospheric water generator

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Re: Google open sources solar atmospheric water generator

#231

Post by traverseda »

jodrellblank wrote: post #187
Isamu wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But aren’t the “debunkings” rather cursory and dismissive? Instead I think real engineering relies on tradeoffs, certain areas of a multidimensional space where an idea makes sense - and others where it doesn’t.

Watch them and find out? He explains why it takes so much energy to boil and condense water, calculates out and explains how many Joules to condense a litre of water, how long that would take for various solar panel sizes, compares the solar-water-collector against mains powered dehumidifiers, compares the solar collectors against using the same size panel as a rainwater catcher in different environments, compares it…

This doesn't use solar electric though. It (mainly) uses direct solar heat. It also doesn't use any kind of peltier cooling. It's a largely passive device with a few minor electric components that won't draw much power.

People using his "rather cursory and dismissive" debunking to debunk other very different technology is kind of annoying.

Re: Google open sources solar atmospheric water generator

#232

Post by dwighttk »

traverseda wrote: post #228
dwighttk wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go buy a 40 pint per day dehumidifier and then start sizing the solar power you will need to run it all day, and then make sure there is enough humidity in the air to actually get 40pints/day and make sure there is enough battery to make up for the days that aren’t sunny, and realize the people who need water generally don’t have that much water in the air, and then realize this is a pipe dream.

It's not solar-electric, it's solar-thermal. Does need some power to circulate the desiccant.

I can guess why this project is not still active. My setup is probably more efficient than X’s setup.

Re: Google open sources solar atmospheric water generator

#233

Post by oofbey »

Semaphor wrote: post #197
oofbey wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So typically Google. Patting themselves on the back for being smart and proving to themselves they could figure it out. But not actually accomplishing anything useful. Getting it to actually work - that’s too easy and boring for a googler to waste their time on.

They did the groundwork. Now it’s open source and anyone can improve/finish it. What would you prefer, them never releasing it, so interested people have nothing to start from? I’m not a Google fan, but I see this as a positive.

But did they do anything new? Or did they just repeat a bunch of research others have already done into dehumidifying water extractors? I honestly don't know. A lot of the comments here make me think it's the latter.

Re: Google open sources solar atmospheric water generator

#234

Post by screenbreakout »

icegreentea2 wrote: post #77
Ansil849 wrote: post #41

So what is the practical use of this? Let's say that I'm not an engineer or a researcher or a coder, but would like to set some of these units up to collect water. How do I do so? Do I approach someone to build this for me (who?)? How much can I expect it to cost? In other words, how can I actualize this vision: > So the H2E team asked: “What if you could put the power to generate daily drinking water into the hands…

The prototype described is tricky. Basically because they want low unit cost, they had to assume mass manufacture techniques such as vacuum forming. This means that the cost of small builds will be quite high (since there's a lot of jigging and molds that have to be 3d printed/CNC'd). Unfortunately, they don't have a BOM cost listed anywhere I've been able to find. But also because this is a prototype, and they wante…

Wouldn't producing prototypes like these with expert manual artisans in less "developed" countries be scales cheaper? like 500$?

Re: Google open sources solar atmospheric water generator

#235

Post by bduerst »

yazaddaruvala wrote: post #32
kempbellt wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Desalinization does not have to be complicated. You can build a simple desalinator (aka, a solar still) with a couple bins, some glass/plexiglass, and access to sunlight. Preferably in an enclosed system to better contain heat and prevent water vapor from escaping. No filters to replace, and it will run for as long as you feed it water. Best link I could find to explain the process: https://www.intechopen.com/chapter…

Where do you put the left over salt? At those levels it’s both toxic for animals and toxic for plants. Even putting it back into the ocean isn’t simple. If you do it in one big batch, you would kill everything in that location for a while. If you do it slowly, that isn’t simple.

Thankfully there are over a dozen different methods of treating, not disposing, desalination brine: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00489...

Re: Google open sources solar atmospheric water generator

#236

Post by kragen »

kragen wrote: post #114
cwkoss wrote: post #35

I want to make an orchard on a hill in the maritime pacific northwest. Its a somewhat odd climate where the time that gets hottest is when it also tends to be dryest (east coast tends to be wetter when hotter). I wonder if something like this (possibly with less focus on "clean" water - it's rural and breezy, so I don' think raw output would harm trees...) could be suitable for generating summer water for tree irriga…

No. The output is orders of magnitude too low. Trees stay cool by evaporating water. The solar energy they're absorbing by doing this is a lower bound on the energy you have to put in to condense that same water out of the air. But tree leaves convert about 75% of the sunlight that hits them into heat (they're a bit more than 75% "efficient" at doing something they don't want) while PV solar panels are only about 21%…

As a correction, the paper is about a solar-thermal-driven sorbent system, not a PV-driven system. So you wouldn't need three times as much solar-collector area as tree leaf area, only about equal amounts. That's still probably orders of magnitude too expensive.

Re: Google open sources solar atmospheric water generator

#237

Post by TaylorAlexander »

capitalsigma wrote: post #225
antonvs wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they talk this big talk about changing the world The unspoken part of that is that the changes in question should be profitable for Alphabet. Anything else is just PR for recruiting and marketing.

The X website is very explicit that X is not a non-profit: > "Is it a research center? An incubator? A non-profit? No, it’s a moonshot factory"

What bothers me is that they really want to "change the world". Well in my mind, intentionally open sourcing something so that innovators all over the world can contribute can be a powerful force for improving upon an idea and lowering costs. When 3D printers were under patent the single company developing them got the cost down to $25k in 12 years. When the patents expired and people all over the world worked on it, the cost dropped to $250 in ten years.

X spends huge sums of money but never takes this approach of intentionally open sourcing a project during continued development in order to tap in to eager innovators all over the world who could contribute. And I think that is unfortunate because that approach can be extremely effective for lowering the cost of things and making them accessible to people all over the world. Personally I feel like they could do this with a few small projects as it is a very cheap development methodology. It would cost them basically nothing compared to their other projects. But then you can't profit from it (as much), so it doesn't fit in to what X is doing.

Which is weird, because X is a powerful development house. They could score a lot of goodwill if they did this on a few of the right projects. And it would have kept me there. But I couldn't find anything like that.

Re: Google open sources solar atmospheric water generator

#238

Post by thefunnyman »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #237
capitalsigma wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The X website is very explicit that X is not a non-profit: > "Is it a research center? An incubator? A non-profit? No, it’s a moonshot factory"

What bothers me is that they really want to "change the world". Well in my mind, intentionally open sourcing something so that innovators all over the world can contribute can be a powerful force for improving upon an idea and lowering costs. When 3D printers were under patent the single company developing them got the cost down to $25k in 12 years. When the patents expired and people all over the world worked on it,…

I fully agree, open source is incredibly underutilized. When it works well it can be extremely powerful. Take for instance the recent flipper zero kickstarter/product. It’s finally shopping and even though it’s very incomplete there’s already a vibrant community of hackers tinkering with it.

I feel the same disappointment as you. As a child I envisioned a world where I could go work at somewhere like Google and truly use their resources to give back but every project seems in some way tainted by the underlying drive to make everything profitable for the company funding it.

Re: Google open sources solar atmospheric water generator

#239

Post by manigandham »

space_rock wrote: post #175
manigandham wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which debunking video was like that?

"Veritasium: BUSTED!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Hyy1zRZPiQ This is his area of expertise and is a great "busting" video Trash: "Elon Musk Invents UNDERGROUND Traffic Jam!" "Tesla Bot" No debunking. Small mindedness, pessimistic rant. Just says Elon will fail but not clear how he knows he will fail

Sure, some videos are more of a rant and he can come across abrasive but I think the fundamental arguments are valid. Hyperloop isn't a viable concept ever since it's been conceived over a century ago. And the tunnel projects have so far been underwhelming and universally panned as worse than a standard lightrail or subway.

The only thing that's relatively unknown is the "Tesla Bot" but considering that self-driving AI is still unsolved, let alone any kind of general intelligence, I don't think there's much behind that either.

Re: Google open sources solar atmospheric water generator

#240

Post by jimmydorry »

ineedasername wrote: post #176
jimmydorry wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a company can't think of anything useful and cost-effective to spend their money on, giving that money back in the way that passes through the largest portion of it is the most productive thing they could do. Let the investors allocate their money efficiently, rather than buying a gold mine as a movie theatre company (as an example).

rather than buying a gold mine as a movie theatre That's a pretty random example. Crypto? Maybe. But it's not like AMC is going to randomly get into the actual physical mining busin-- (hold on, it's 2022, lmgt just in case) Yes, a perfectly good example.

Yes, very 2022-esque. xD
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