Vaporators! Sir - My first job was programming binary load lifters, very similar to your vaporators.
IN MOST RESPECTS
Scientist Creates Self-Filling Water Bottle
31–40 of 56 posts
Re: Scientist Creates Self-Filling Water Bottle
#32My question is what kind of contaminants (or none!) this process picks up - If you're getting your water from a polluted atmosphere (say, LA), what kind of pollutants end up in your water? Or does it produce "ultra-pure" water, leading to weird health risks like hyponatremia?
You won't get hyponatremia from overly "pure" or distilled water. The amount is water is utterly dwarfed by the amount in food.
If there are pollutants in air they will be in the water, but it's not a actually a problem because, although they might be bad to breath, most air pollutants are harmless when eaten.
Carbon (soot), Ozone, NOs, sulfur dioxide (smog), etc are harmless to eat.
Re: Scientist Creates Self-Filling Water Bottle
#33This is a fabulous technology, but we shouldn't get carried away. Firstly, this is another disruption of the world's water cycle, which we have already managed to a considerable degree, and if we manage atmospheric water extraction on a massive scale, we will wreak havoc with the climate (again). Note, I said: if we do this on a massive scale.
And even if you do it on a massive scale nothing at all will happen.
We have these enormous oceans on earth, and if the air gets dry more water will simply evaporate from the ocean. It takes about a month for air to completely circle the globe - and a whole lot less than that for air from any particular place on earth to reach the ocean.
So even if you completely dry out air in one spot it'll be replenished within a day or two at most. Meaning that overall you never will actually dry out the air.
And remember that on a global basis water is more or less never created or destroyed. So any water you capture from the air, will just end up right back in the air.
You water a plant and it converts the water to hydrocarbons, those hydrocarbons are then eaten, and are "burned" and are converted right back into water.
Same for the water you drink - it's only in your system temporarily, it will end up in the environment again later.
Re: Scientist Creates Self-Filling Water Bottle
#34> Sorenson notes there is more than three quadrillion gallons of water in the air, which is essentially a massive untapped resource. For what it's worth, air with low humidity can be pretty damaging. Lots of materials would become excessively brittle at very low humidities, causing them to break easily. This interesting white paper [1] suggests that, for most materials, the optimal humidity is between 40-60%. Still,…
Any water you capture will just be sent back into the air later. Think of what you drink - all of it end up in the air or land again later.
Re: Scientist Creates Self-Filling Water Bottle
#35This may be a stupid question, but if the device requires power in order to move air over the water-collecting surface, would it work without power if it were outside in a breeze? Or is there something about the air flow in terms of its characteristics or location in/on the device that requires a manufactured flow?
To get water out of the air, it has to be condensed into liquid. Condensation requires a significant temperature difference, and the best way to get that is refrigerant. I'm surprised that he was able to do this using only a solar powered fan.
You could create condensation with only a light breeze, but it probably wouldn't yield a significant amount of water. I think the best case for these would be to attach them to balloons and put them high into the atmosphere (where it's much colder), so that they could produce even more water with the same amount of energy.
Re: Scientist Creates Self-Filling Water Bottle
#36If I might channel my inner grumpy-old-man for a moment:
I find it curious that people who design nifty new devices are regularly referred to as "scientists". This is not science; it is engineering. Why not call it that?
Re: Scientist Creates Self-Filling Water Bottle
#37If I might channel my inner grumpy-old-man for a moment: I find it curious that people who design nifty new devices are regularly referred to as "scientists". This is not science; it is engineering . Why not call it that?
That'll happen when people understand the actual definition of "theory" :)
Re: Scientist Creates Self-Filling Water Bottle
#38This might be the first case of biomimicry on the front page :). This was one of the entries in our 2011 Biomimicry Student Design Challenge [1]. It's pretty exciting to see how far they've taken it from concept to funding [2] in a short amount of time.
[1] http://2011.biomimicrydesignchallenge.com/gallery (#38 -- 5 rows from bottom in center)
[2] http://ben.biomimicry.net/uni/2012/biomimicry-design-wins-bo...
Re: Scientist Creates Self-Filling Water Bottle
#39If I might channel my inner grumpy-old-man for a moment: I find it curious that people who design nifty new devices are regularly referred to as "scientists". This is not science; it is engineering . Why not call it that?
I can't wait to hear what you'll have to say when someone will call themselves a "computer scientist" ;)
Re: Scientist Creates Self-Filling Water Bottle
#40My question is what kind of contaminants (or none!) this process picks up - If you're getting your water from a polluted atmosphere (say, LA), what kind of pollutants end up in your water? Or does it produce "ultra-pure" water, leading to weird health risks like hyponatremia?
Your lungs are probably at least as efficient at pulling those pollutants out of the air and sending them straight into your bloodstream.
Any air that distills out water that was worse to drink than what was available locally would probably kill you to breathe just as quickly.