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Creating Water from Thin Air

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the droid-that-understands-the-binary-language-of-moisture-vaporators dept.

Iphtashu Fitz writes "In order to provide the U.S. Military with water in places like Iraq, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency gave millions of dollars in research funding to companies like LexCarb and Sciperio to try to extract water from the air. Amazingly, a company that DARPA didn't fund, Aqua Sciences, beat them all to the punch by developing a machine that can extract up to 600 gallons of water a day from thin air even in locations like arid deserts. The 20 foot machine does this without using or producing toxic materials or byproducts. The CEO of Aqua Sciences declined to elaborate on how the machine works, but said it is based on the natural process by which salt absorbs water."

2 of 348 comments (clear)

  1. Good! by thefirelane · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So the government failed to fund a company who promised unbelievable results with no byproducts while not supplying any details? I must say, I'm actually proud of them. Glad to see tax dollars aren't being wasted on Vaporware

  2. Can I get a shoutout from all the foodies? by jjohn · · Score: 4, Interesting
    From the article:
    "We figured out how to tap it in a very unique and proprietary way," Sher said. "We figured out how to mimic nature, using natural salt to extract water and act as a natural decontamination.

    "Think of the Dead Sea, where nothing grows around it because the salt dehydrates everything. It's kind of like that."

    All the Alton Brown geeks in the house should have perked up their ears when they read that. Salt is hydroscopic; it attracts water. Sugar is also hydroscopic, but salt is much cheaper (especially if you don't need food-grade salt).

    There are two ways salt is harvested by humans: evaporation and mining.

    I can see using salt to grab the moisture in the air present in the pre-dawn skies, but I don't rightly know how to make the salt give it back up. I assume they just cook the rocks and capture the steam. Salt, being a rock, can be heated lots of times before degrading.

    I imagine a process like this would produce fairly clean water.

    Give up for Food Science! Hell ya!