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At first pass, I would guess that something like this would primarily be useful in places with naturally high humidity, which aren't likely to have a shortage of water in the first place, no?
Maybe the argument is that the natural sources of water are dirty, and extracting from the air is automatically clean and safe to drink, but it still seems like it may be more resource efficient to invest in water treatment, not a fleet of dehumidifiers.
So, a solar powered dehumidifier? At first pass, I would guess that something like this would primarily be useful in places with naturally high humidity, which aren't likely to have a shortage of water in the first place, no? Maybe the argument is that the natural sources of water are dirty, and extracting from the air is automatically clean and safe to drink, but it still seems like it may be more resource efficient…
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Or that they just don’t see how it’s a market fit for their business.
Que? Isn't "don’t see how it’s a market fit" just startup speak for "it's not economically viable"? That would fall squarely into the category of design failures I was talking about. It's not like we don't know any mechanism to cause condensation from air.
So, a solar powered dehumidifier? At first pass, I would guess that something like this would primarily be useful in places with naturally high humidity, which aren't likely to have a shortage of water in the first place, no? Maybe the argument is that the natural sources of water are dirty, and extracting from the air is automatically clean and safe to drink, but it still seems like it may be more resource efficient…
It isn't, though. Bacteria accumulate. Dehumidifiers are generally very nasty. Although bacteria can then be killed (not sure about their toxins), while other contaminants may not be very easy to get rid of.
Almost every place on Earth has humidity above 0%. Which makes it possible to extract water, even if it's very inefficient. People have condensed water successfully in deserts.
Fundamentally flawed idea. Places that need water are the most are dry, they have no humidity, as there is little to no water in the air.
The Sahara desert has a relative humidity of 25% (on average). Humidity tends to be much higher in deserts at night. Atacama can go to 0-2% _at noon in direct sunlight_, but as high as 50% at night.
The driest location on the planet is probably Antarctica. Yes, full of water, in the form of ice, but the air is dry.
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My question was more, how does this help individuals without access to clean water, not a dystopian 'how can it be co-opted by corporations for business ends', but I appreciate the varying definitions of "practical" people have.
> My question was more, how does this help individuals without access to clean water If the principle of it is sound, which I cannot verify, then by a manufacturer picking up the idea. Developing it into a product and selling it to individuals. They are basically saying (paraphrasing) "Hey we suck at manufacturing things at scale, so we won't continue with this idea. But we don't want to let our learnings go to waste…
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…
But also because this is a prototype, and they wanted to be able to tinker and measure, there's lots of design features and parts that are quite expensive and not really needed. Assembly also appears to be tricky and time consuming with non-trivial risk of damaging parts that then need to be repaired.
So ultimately you have a design and plan that's neither directly suitable for mass-production or low volume production (which is fine! it's a prototype! it's super not done). The prototype as described would likely form an acceptable basis for further revision.
You could probably go to a mechanical engineering design/consulting/prototyping firm with this and ask them to make it real with minimal changes (removing extraneous measurement devices, maybe swap out some of the grommets). It'd probably cost you like 50k at least to get your first one. Second one probably will cost like 100 bucks range.
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…
If it's extracting water from the air, "hot and dry" does not seem to be a good situation. You'd want humid air. Any water condensed from the air is going to be "pure" by most measures. It's essentially distilled water.
And you can freely give it for spherical cows to drink in vacuum.
Keeping any such device free from contamination is very difficult. Bacteria love the moist environments. Leave it unattended and you have moist dust. Lovely.
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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.
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Then you don't need to extract water from the air. Just make it potable.
Depending on the type of pollution, making it potable could be just as hard as distilling it.