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Water From Wind
ghostcorps recommends a writeup in The Australian by columnist Phillip Adams about a new windmill design that extracts water from air. The article gives few details of how it works, because patent protection is not yet in place, but what is revealed sounds promising. "[Max] Whisson's design has many blades, each as aerodynamic as an aircraft wing, and each employing 'lift' to get the device spinning... They don't face into the wind like a conventional windmill; they're arranged vertically, within an elegant column, and take the wind from any direction... The secret of Max's design is how his windmills, whirring away in the merest hint of a wind, cool the air as it passes by... With three or four of Max's magical machines on hills at our farm we could fill the tanks and troughs, and weather the drought. One small Whisson windmill on the roof of a suburban house could keep your taps flowing. Biggies on office buildings, whoppers on skyscrapers, could give independence from the city's water supply. And plonk a few hundred in marginal outback land — specifically to water tree-lots — and you could start to improve local rainfall."
Things I would like to know:
1. Does this design perform better than other windmill designs (for generation).
2. What will this do to the atmospheric conditions?
3. If everyone has one....will it no longer rain?
Layne
Wow. Reminds me of the Windtraps from Frank Herbert's Dune.
Next thing you know, we'll be harvesting spice.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Excellent, so now anyone living near, but not in a city can enjoy a barren landscape when the rain no longer falls.
Alright, sarcasm aside, surely there are bound to be some less-than-good effects on the surrounding enviroment if large amounts of water are 'sucked' out of the atmosphere prematurely?
Seems pretty obvious that if one of these things actually can extract the moisture from the air passing by, whatver's downwind is going to get even less than would otherwise be the case.
"...plonk a few hundred in marginal outback land -- specifically to water tree-lots -- and you could start to improve local rainfall."
:)
So, condensing water from the air to water trees, from which some of the water will transpire back to the atmosphere, might improve local rainfall? Is that like the "lose money on every sale, but we make it up in volume" line?
Anything that creates lift creates a lower pressure, which in turn refrigerates, and eventually induces condensation.
A Mere Matter of Programming to model an aerodynamic shape that maximizes condensation and captures the resulting droplets.
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
You should never refer to a new piece of technology as "Max's magical machine" unless it's being sold on TV.
We can now turn the Australian Outback into Tattooine. We now have vaporators!
Your vaporizers are no longer vaporware.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
[Max] Whisson's design has many blades, each as aerodynamic as an aircraft wing,
Yeah, but you know Schick is just going to add one more blade and totally steal his marketshare.
Push Button, Receive Bacon
Goodnight!
Just think, no more cloudy skies downwind of the water harvesting farms.
I wonder how effective these would be in already arid areas, or what the relative humidity of the air needs to be to get a substantial amount of water from these?
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law - Aleister Crowley
One small Whisson windmill on the roof of a suburban house could keep your taps flowing. Biggies on office buildings, whoppers on skyscrapers, could give independence from the city's water supply.
And enough of them and the humidity of the air will drop, reducing all of these miracle machines to a trickle. Probably not good for the local plant and wildlife, too. Rain is important.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Incidentally, anybody here but me wondering what effect dessicating ambient air will have on the ecosystem? One guy, one installation, no big - you put 1,000 of these in 1 square mile, I bet you get a dry microclimate. Fill a city with these babies, you could well have an impact on weather patterns for hundreds of miles.
This isn't like, say, hydroelectric energy production - there, the water is only slowed slightly in its natural journey to the lowest point it can find. Here, you're extracting a trace gas (water vapor) from air - not slowing it down (think: classic windmill, hydroelectric dam) but taking it out (think: pumping water out of a lake/river/well for irrigation).
Besides - people already balk at the idea of having a wind farm near their residence (classic NIMBY reaction). Just 'cuz these 'mills make water instead of electricity doesn't make 'em any less of an eyesore.
What I really need is a droid that understands its language.
Dear Will, the plums were poisoned. -- Cheese Club
I would imagine that Max's design could use the blades to pump the water and run it through coils that the air passes through. Like a dehumidifier, it would extract the water and drip it into a basin.
Well, I know trees consume a lot of water (tens of gallons a day) so these windmills would have to do a lot. But I'm not sure how that would improve local rainfall. It may be a way to augment local rainfall but in no way would it improve it. Trees are known to improve water quality but I think they actually take away from the water table and increase evaporation. I think that final statement is one to attract venture capitalists and government workers than to spread the truth.
My work here is dung.
Because removing water from the air in the dead of winter when its already dry as a bone well make cities that use the tech all over even dryer for the amount of water they would need to pull out for the air for the purpose of use in buildings.
the article states that with these windmills, water will be replenished into the air from the oceans. how do we know this? how was this proven?
and if the water content of oceans diminishes, the salt content increases proportionately. that would threaten to bring dramatic change to the fragile balance of the environment for marine life.
when man plays with mother nature, we almost inevitably come out on the losing end.
* drain the swamps in new orleans, then lose 60% of the land's ability to absorb water.
* introduce pest-killing amphibians to the everglades, then they procreate without preditors and wipe out existing species.
* water the deserts of nevada to make lush golf courses, then people in colorado go thirsty and firemen can't put out historically large forest fires covering hundreds of thousands of acres.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Forgive me for being unaware of this impending catatrophe, but is there really an urgent issue? Is this mainly happening in Australia? I thought floods were going to be the next big problem, due to global warming.
What should I be bracing myself for? Floods or droughts? I need to know what I should panic about. Thanks.
Compare the volume of air that any good-sized unit can draw moisture from (and assuming 100% efficiency which is BS) to the total volume of air passing across the area. That's like saying too many windmills will stop the wind blowing. Stop smoking crack.
If you put the condensors where moist air usually flows out to sea or over a lake it will just suck up moisture from the body of water, resulting in no reduced rainfall over land. Places with high humidity might see no difference in rainfall, since it'd be hard to extract water faster than water gets added naturally.
Man, you really need that seminar!
You could extract it from the Northwest in winter time, lord knows they have enough rain already!
And, the story states that it cools the air, if we put up enough of these, we can solve global warming!
I wonder, if you coated the planet in these things, what it would do to the global climate. Hmmm.
Sounds like vaporware to me... just a lot of hot air...
I've taken quite a few photos of lift-induced condensation at the airshows to which I've been. This sounds like a vertical-vane windmill specially designed to capture lift-induced condensation.
"Man invents windstill"
Best Slashdot Co
..puts one up, won't the majority of them end up in North America aka only one side of the planet? You think global warming is bad now, wait until we start propelling ourselves towards the sun.
Blerg.
Vertical axis windmills are not new. They have a nasty habit of shaking themselves to death.
As for getting water out of air, using desiccants sounds more promising.
Prandtl-Glauert condensation occurs around the transonic range, while lift-induced condensation can occur any time you have high lift (such at flight at high angles of attack, very tight turns, and wingtip vortices).
It runs on water, that means Free Energy(tm)
or ... maybe not.
Do you have any idea what the average dewpoint is in the fucking desert?
Keep an eye on this. A forty-degree F difference between ambient and dewpoint is not uncommon, and I've seen it as high as 60F.
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/data/obhistory/KLAS.html
For some reason, the technology described just reminds me of a venturi nozzle. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venturi
When you pull water out of the air, you change the downstream environment substantially. Hot dry winds suck the moisture out of what they pass over, the ground, plants, etc, and things burn.
Knowing how this will affect down flow areas is critical, lest they create more problems than they fix.
Just a FYI.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
Rather ironic that the supposedly unrelated "fortune" displayed with this story (lower right corner of page) is "Fremen add life to spice!"
(OBexplaination: "Fremen" & "spice" being a reference to the book "Dune" (which you HAVE read, right? no?) which makes a big deal of harvesting moisture.)
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Call me stupid, but...
If global warming causes icecaps to melt and enter the global water system,
and this machine removes water from the system,
then I think I may have just solved global warming. (patent pending)
I was about to make a Dune comment, when I saw that someone already beat me to it with the tag...
I don't recall if the book mentioned them, but I remember seeing them in either the Sci-Fi Channel or the movie from the 80s. Frank Herbert had a bunch of interesting concepts in the book, including the Stillsuit idea and the water collection beads. Potable water will or is causing military conflicts. In a few years it will be even worse.
No pun intended?
What does it say about your values that your first reaction to a potentially revolutionary invention is negative? I'm not saying that the windmill technology works; quite frankly, I'd bet that it doesn't. That said, any device that can extract water vapor from air with any degree of efficiency could have a revolutionary effect on the dryer areas of the globe. Africa in particular could benefit from this type of device in a very serious way. Consider just how profound the consequences of this device could be for sub-Saharan Africa, if it's economically viable.
You should be pleased by the discovery of this invention. Your initial reaction shouldn't be that the extraction of a few gallons of water vapor per day will bring about the end of the world.
Think about it.
"Man is nothing without the works of man" -- Helvetius
Frank Herbert has prior art with Dune's windtraps.
Alright, sarcasm aside, surely there are bound to be some less-than-good effects on the surrounding enviroment if large amounts of water are 'sucked' out of the atmosphere prematurely?
Sure it can have a negative effect on the environment, just like the negative effects from the millions of cars on the road daily.
It can also have a very positive effect on the environment -- Mosquitoes breed in stagnant pools of water, and they transmit Malaria, which kills millions of people every year.
Global warming has increased the spread of malaria, for which there is no vaccine. Right now it kills people mainly in sub-saharan Africa, although it causes 350 million to 500 million infections in a broad swath around the equator, and as the world warms it is spreading farther north.Right now fresh water is becoming really scarce, too, -- China is having a huge groundwater crisis as their pollution is contaminating their groundwater supplies. Their huge demand for water is sucking water out of the ground and sucking the pollution into the major underground aquifers.
There are a lot of places where the water table is seriously being lowered because of our greed for water, and this is causing real problems, in the California, Texas, and India amnong many other places where the water table has been lowered hundreds of feet. The ground can subside because of loss of support from the water table, and seawater can start contaminating it, rendering wells useless. Conserving our groundwater can be tremendously helpful.
I saw a movie that had moisturefarmers in it once.
It looked like a hard scrabble existence.
This farmer seemed to be pretty haggard, he needed droids, he needed more human hands helping to control the droids, and his nephew was no help, all he wanted to do was waste time with his friends.
And to top it all off he bought some droids off the back of a truck, which of course belonged to someone else, and this brought the goverment into the picture....
It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
If you set up an array of these offshore, would this be an effective means of generating drinkable water? I could see a whole bunch of these a mile off the California coastline, if that was true.
Wow... being a bit anal there. Wind is air in motion... and air has water vapor. And, technically, since the device can only work when the wind is blowing it is pretty much extracting water from wind. Quit being so anal.
One way to express atmospheric vapour is in grams of water per kilogram of air or at sea level roughly grams of water per cubic metre of air. So at a conservative temperature of 25C (77F) air can hold roughly 20 grams of water per cubic metre but for dry air of relative humidty of 25% there would be 5 grams of water per cubic metre of air. Assuming the device can extract 20% of the water (in this case cooling the air to 1C or 34F) you would need to process 1000 cu metres of air to get one litre of water; roughly one US quart. So if we assume a windspeed of 15 m/s (54 km/h or 33 mph) and a 10 square metres (roughly 100 sq ft) area of collection we need just under 7 seconds to get a litre. My estimate of 20% collection is likely VERY high and for much of the Australian dessert 25% RH is pretty high too. Cooling air by 24 C degrees takes a pretty large pressure drop in the vanes... roughly 7%. But all that said even an order of magnitude error would permit a one litre per minute collection rate... of course several order of magnitude errors in my estimates would make that per day pretty quickly...so concievable but seems pretty optimistic to me
Don't bother, these people are "orders-of-magnitude challenged". Wait for the next Mars probe crash and they'll say "Mars must look like a junkyard now".
My guess is this thing pumps water from surface level, into the ground, and back up to surface level through thin copper tubing (the thinner and more coiled the more surface area) while air is forced by these coils. Easy to power and it should work well enough for a decent amount of water to condense on the coils. Either this or a similar idea using the peltier effect.
:)
Equip one of these with solar panels to bring in even more power and you might be onto something, although I have the same questions about the effects on the environment as everyone else does.
Maybe we should build these on the polar ice caps to drop fresh water on the ice to freeze?
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
it's what happens when I fart.
Who says wind power doesn't harm the environment.
...and you could power a human habitat!
It's a valid idea for places like LA. Perhaps 70% of the local surface area is "paved". It would be realistic to capture this excess rain water (when and if it rains) in the Long Beach Bay. With the use of large amounts of plastic you could create a fresh water lake on top of the bay. The water could at least be used to water golf courses or industrial processes (like beer making).
What a good way to extract atmospheric moisture. And drifting pesticides, emmision fumes, particulate pollution blowing from every industrial site in the area... its like a pollutent-concentrator! Might be good for agriculture, but if you set this up in a city than I dont want to drink what comes out of it.
i want my damn stillsuit
This could potentially fight global warming by extracting some of that unnecessary green house gas (water vapour) from teh air :)
Understand that moisture content in the air is established by temperature and pressure. There is water in Australia, its just not dropping out of the sky. If you extract moisture from the air, then when that air is in the presence of liquid water it will induce some evaporation. That being said, this system could work either by using the reduced pressure from the airfoil surface or more likely by actually creating some compression and then having a decompression path for the air that goes through a condenser. All that being said, I was in Australia a couple of months ago and speaking as someone from California I'd say that if they put flow restrictors on their faucets it would do them a world of good. Sure taking a shower in a 6gpm shower is luxurious but really, do you really care about conserving water if you let your water run free like that? Low flow toilets? Nope. Granted I was mostly in the cities (Sydney, Canberra, etc) but still it seemed there wasn't a lot of "internalizing" what it means to live in a drought. --C
Not if you remember to piss off the leeward side of the boat.
People keep claiming that the project is doomed to failure due the fact that moisture will be removed from the air, thereby creating desert conditions in the surrounding areas. Possible, yes, but there are other factors.
First off, from what I read and heard, it functions by creating small low-pressure systems. These systems have a cooling, and thus condensing, effect on the air. However, given enough of these low systems, you will increase the overall amount of diffusion (high pressure systems would move more rapidly towards these low systems). These warmer bodies of air, as they enter the system, would carry more moisture (warm air has a higher carrying capacity for water vapor), which would then condense at the fans.
Wash, rinse, repeat (profit?)
Of course, questions have to be answered regarding how this, if done in a large scale, would impact the national and global weather patterns. It seems as though this wouldn't work unless it was on a massive scale (not in a drought-ending kind of way, at least).
Of interest: An inch of water over 1 acre is 27,154 U.S. gallons and weighs about 113 (short) tons.
I am wondering if you have a large population centre like say the Bay Area or L.A. if there would be a significant rain shadow like on the lee side of a mountain range. So areas to the east would see significantly less rain than they do now.
We know that a large city produces a localized heating effect. So I would bet it is possible. It is always hotter in a city due to the concentrated human activity than outside the city several klicks or miles. On the prairies in winter this is fairly noticeable and can be quite a few degrees C difference.
But let's see if this is real or just someone trying to advertise for investors on Slashdot.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
What a good way to extract atmospheric moisture. And drifting pesticides, emmision fumes, particulate pollution blowing from every industrial site in the area... its like a pollutent-concentrator!
Kinda like a rainstorm, isn't it?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Besides - people already balk at the idea of having a wind farm near their residence (classic NIMBY reaction). Just 'cuz these 'mills make water instead of electricity doesn't make 'em any less of an eyesore.
In Australia, people just won't care if it produces water, particularly in the southeast. We're currently in the grips of a ten year drought - many, many farmers are completely reliant on government assistance to not go bankrupt and put food on the table, and the suicide rate amoung them is at an all time high. If this could produce enough water to irrigate and/or water livestock, it could destroy the aesthetics of the area completely and they'd still be perfectly happy to have one. Even in the suburbs there would be very little opposition - everyone knows that our water reserves are running ridiculously low, which is leading to such measures becoming common as capturing the water your shower runs through before it heats up sufficiently in a bucket to use on the garden (see here).
People only tend to balk at these things if they have the luxury of doing so, and at this stage it really is a matter of life and death.
You do realize you're arguing with a Vonnegut character, don't you?
The Seawater Greenhouse is another idea in solar powered clean water supply. So is this.
I'm just sick of all these efforts to speed De-desertification on planet earth. I mean, think of all the arid land we're destroying here folks! We can't just sit back and let the forests take over the planet...
Won't the environmentalists have fun with this one...
Wow! This must be a PERSONAL letter, just for me!
Whoo-hoo, that's a great idea! Now, instead of a single, central, easily regulated and maintained water supply we can have hundreds or thousands of separate water supplies, each with their own, probably increased, potential for contamination. Just think of all the new economic opportunities generated by the upsurge of water-borne illness and poisoning from contaminated water!
Yes, this entire article sounds like a load of hooey. We already have vertical windmills that can extract power from wind regardless of direction (which is probably why this guy hasn't gotten a patent yet). As for practical extraction of water from the air, I'd bet that you can't get more than a dozen gallons per day out of a small (less than 30 feet tall) windmill. That might be enough for a small household's drinking water, but I don't think it would cover cleaning needs (dishes, clothes and bathing).
just a ghost in the machine.
From what I see there will be many side effects of such a system. First, as many have mentioned, it will pull moisture out of the air. This means that there will be less moisture downwind and with enough of these windmills, a dry region. That said, though, taking moisture out of the air increase the amount of room in the air for more moisture and thereby would allow evaporation downwind to be more efficient. On the other hand, if there is no rain replenishing the water, it would eventually all dry out. Second, since it has a cooling effect, this also means the air temperature would drop downwind. In fact, with enough of them, you may cause a significant drop in temperature. Not only is it dry at that point, but its also cold. Since colder air cannot hold moisture as well as warmer air, this cancels out any increased efficiency in evaporation. Third, if you drop the temperature enough, you might hit your dewpoint. You also might not considering you are removing moisture from the air and thereby lowering the dewpoint. Lets say for now you do hit your dewpoint because the removal of moisture isn't as effective as the decrease in temperature. Anyone who knows anything about weather knows if the temperature reaches the dewpoint, it start to rain. This means there is more moisture in the air than the air can hold. Now its raining removing even more of the moisture from the air, though putting it on our dry cold region we were talking about. At that point, its just a cold region though dropping water out of the air may cause a region further away to now become our dry cold region. Last, as people have also noted, there will be a low pressure area in our cold region. Storms tend to develop between high and low pressure regions under some circumstances and at the very least, high winds. If our cold region isn't a stormy cold region and that point, its a windy cold region. But then again, the air of the high pressure area will probably be warmer than our windy cold region which then makes it warmer. So now we just have a windy region. If the windmills slow down the air at all, then everything may just equal out in the end. I think it would take a meteorologist of some experience and perhaps someone of the more physical science persuasion to work out all the effects and if it will have any overall effect.
i believe a device like this would increase the amount of rain, since rising air cools and condenses anyway, why not harness this process?
..pushing air up is what makes clouds and rain...
Not only would these things take moisture out of the air, possibly causing weather changes (if everyone used them) but, since these aren't using an external source of power to cool air to condense water vapor, you have to keep in mind that energy doesn't come out of thin air!! Well, actually, in this case it does...ahemmm.. ok since you are using the wind's energy to aid in the condensation of water vapor, you are going to further cause changes to the environment. This energy comes at a cost...if these machines were EVERYWHERE, the wind speeds are going to die down. Who knows what climatic changes slower winds will cause. Also, everyone's machines will become less efficient as wind speeds die down and moisture levels drop.
On a seperate note, I do not believe the claim that you can extract just as much water out of the air in a DESERT!! There is hardly ANY moisture in the desert and, if you manage to capture some, good luck containing it before it evaporates, while you attempt to collect a usable amount!
I hope the parent comment was a joke, but if not, please take a look at this site:
m l
http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/waterdistribution.ht
The oceans contain 96.5% of the water on the Earth. The soil moisture, which is what we would like to increase, contains 0.001% of the water. Even if you doubled the soil moisture with this technique, the the oceans would still contain 96.5% of the water. The change is simply too small to register on the same scale. So don't worry about the salt balance of the oceans.
Almost all the moisture taken from the atmosphere would btw end right back in the atmosphere again, as evapotranspiration. But in the process, it would allow plants to grow.
Why couldnt we outfit all sewer openings with a smallish paddlewheel thing to generate and store electricity when water is flowing in? I mean, I'm not an engineer but rather a SlashTroll but I'm curious why this wouldnt work.
Here's my take on the economics of a windmill approach... I recently read an article about how a typical power generation windmill has three blades, maybe 25 M in diameter, and in the future might generate 500 KW. Today, say 3-5 KW per blade per meter but in no case do shorter blades offer the efficiency of bigger blades. Some of the better dehumidifiers out there get about 20 Liters/day (say 6-1/2 gallons) per kilowatt from reasonably moist. So a 3 blade 5 meter windmill would get 3*5*3=45 KW of energy, and presumably put out about about 900 liters of water. Enough to live on and water a small garden, but not drought ending by any means.
Now then, in a hot climate, use that same power generation to pump seawater into a salt pond, then consider that in hot climates the sun provides enough heat over a 40mx40m pond (1600 Sq Meters)-- this equals around 9 MW day avg -- and use that tremendous heat rise to power a moist-lift evaporation / power unit -- now you've got the capacity to create a whole lot more fresh water and power. Even if the power generation capacity is only 5% efficient, by my calculation that's still about 70 KW/hr. PLUS the remaining heat is still available for desalination purposes
But all the engineering to make the pond, the moist-lift evaporator, and the power unit plus the water storage or transport system-- all of those cost serious money because they just can't be mass produced.
See this article in Mother Earth News" that is kind of old but has the specifics of one implementation like this...
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
I suggested elsewhere that deploying wind farms could combat global warming by extracting kinetic energy from the climate; it probably isn't very much energy compared to the total amount of energy circulating in the atmosphere, but every little bit helps, and we get energy to boot.
This article raises another interesting possibility to further enhance the above wind farm effect: water vapour is one of the most potent greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, and reducing the ambient moisture in the air would thus reduce greenhouse effects. Piggybacking this technique on a regular wind farm (if possible), could potentially have a significant effect.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
A hotel in tropical Northern Australia could use a few of these to generate power and fresh water while at the same time removing the sticky dampness from the air. The things could work as somewhat of a air conditioner throughout the tropics if it works. Yeah it is still hot, but a dry heat is usually easier to tolerate. What would happen if you had a bunch of these up the East coast sucking water out of a pre-hurricane storm. Could you suck enough out to make a difference? What would happen if you had a bunch off the coast taking in water from the air and then pumping it by pipeline to cities like San Diego and LA that could use the water (and power) but aren't particularly humid. Alcatraz was shut down because it cost too much to bring fresh water in everyday. That sort of issue goes away if this invention works. I'm sure its probably vaporware but if it works there are some interesting applications.
This isn't like, say, hydroelectric energy production - there, the water is only slowed slightly in its natural journey to the lowest point it can find. Here, you're extracting a trace gas (water vapor) from air - not slowing it down (think: classic windmill, hydroelectric dam) but taking it out (think: pumping water out of a lake/river/well for irrigation).
True, it's not like Hydro power with it's vast expanse of resivour behind the dam that houses the turbines that extract the energe from the falling water. Proportionally, I suspect the environmental impact from these units (even hundreds of them) will be minimal compared to the impact created by a big hydro-power installation. Lake Shasta, Powell, or Mead, anyone? The volume of effect will be tiny compared to the cubic miles of air in the nearby atmosphere. Think of the impact of, say, 1000 of them in a 1 square mile area. Seems like a lot, until you picture the column of air extending several miles upward. There may be some micro-climate effects in the immediate vicinity, but they'll be tiny, and reduce further as it gets drier.
Ultimately, this seems like a pretty cool technology: assuming it's not vaporware. (damn, managed to get both Cooling and Vapor into the same sentence about a water extraction system...)
Cheers
Bagheera
Never attribute to malice what can as easily be the result of incompetence...
I don't know if this thing is patentable, though - once the wind generates power, using that power (or passive air cooling) to condense water from air should be fairly trivial. Of course, the efficiency of the mechanism which generates that power from wind would be crucial (and is probably the part he's patenting).
You would need a lot of these things to have more of an effect than the minor but observable weather effects we see with things like land clearing around cities. You can only suck the water out at ground level and only where you have one.
There are some ancient dew collectors. Check this one.
Man, you really need that seminar!
That damn second law will get you every time. /ANY/ sufficiently large scale process will tend to end up heating the universe.
1 for the livestock tanks
1 for the barn
1 for the house
Then the power company can CMA as I can turn off my wells
My wells account for 1/2 of my $600.00 month power bill.
-- I am the NRA, enough said...
This idea has been used for hundreds (possibly thousands) of years. Lots of moisture collecting hills have been found around the world. They don't dessicate the air any more than all that breathing by humans humidifies it. It's a clever, clean way to get water where there is none to be had from ground sources.
A slashdotter who can spell "desiccant" correctly!?
You don't belong here, my friend. /. is for people who can't spell "its".
(If you used a spell checker, ignore the above. You can stay.)
But I was gonna go into Toshi Station to pick up some power converters!
The atmosphere above one square mile of earth (556 billion sq. ft. up to cloud tops at 20,000 ft.) therefore contains about 556 million pounds of water (252 million liters) depending on temperature, relative humidity. This is enough to cover the entire surface to a depth of about 10cm (4 inches).
This is a lot of water and is unlikely to be depleted but even a large concentration of windmills. Especially when you consider that when the wind blows, it replenishes the air and moisture... not likely to cause any drought.
(Disclaimer: This is fast and dirty math. It contains gross approximations and possibly a few errors. )
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Someone, quick, alert microsoft. There is still time to get that patent application in!!!111!
[an error occurred while processing this sig]
"they affect weather (slow it down, for one thing.)"
During the first (and biggest) of Denver's recent snowstorms the two feet of snow on our longest sidewalk increased to over three feet where the sidewalk was directly downwind from two of our neighbor's ash trees. It went back to about two feet on the other side. A perfect white bell curve. The bastard.
I'll trump your Dune reference with a Trek one - you need to think in three dimensions. The sheer scale required to get most of the water from the air in a large area would be staggering.
A simple PCT patent search reveals more details..... PCT Publication Number WO2007009184 see: http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/fetch.jsp?DISP=25&IDB =0&SORT=1175823-KEY&LANG=ENG&LANGUAGE=ENG&SERVER_T YPE=19&FORM=SEP-0%2FHITNUM%2CB-ENG%2CDP%2CMC%2CPA% 2CABSUM-ENG&IA=AU2006001023&TOTAL=1&C=0&SEARCH_IA= AU2006001023&START=1&QUERY=WO%2F2007%2F009184&DBSE LECT=PCT&TYPE_FIELD=256&RESULT=1&IDOC=1238263&DISP LAY=DOCS
Peter Treloar
It's a trap!
Looks like he has had this idea for a few years, and has filed multiple applications. Australian Patent search
Does it mill corn into flour? No? Then it's not a windmill. It may be a windsomething else, but not a windmill. Wind power does more than mill corn. Stop saying mill, if it doesn't mill.
Does it matter? Yes. Being smart, not stupid, matters. You're meant to be nerds. Get it right.
1 mm of rain is 1 liter per square meter. Or 10 cubic meters per hectare.
(Atmosphere gets thinner and drier as you go up).
Y'know, my automobile only puts out a tiny amount of pollutants - by itself. Put my car together with, say, 150,000 others and let us all drive around the San Fernando Valley for awhile.
What? You mean that's already been done? What's the air like out there?
As I said elsewhere, my little automobile is well-tuned and doesn't put too many pollutants in the air - by itself. Something about the difference between being crushed by a boulder or buried under 10,000 pebbles. The first is far more dramatic; but the second is equally lethal, less obvious and harder to prevent.
I'm almost certainly overstating the point, but we've gotten to where we are by not looking before we leap. New technology; I think that at least a phased introduction would be in order. Pilot programs - if the impact is as minimal as most here seem to think, then a pilot program should readily prove that. If not (unlikely, but possible) then we could save ourselves a whole world of heartburn.
I was going to point out basically the same thing. The effect is likely negligible, even with large numbers of them. The volume of the air that passes through the turbine is tiny compared to the volume of air that passes above or even around the turbine.
However, I'm also rather skeptical that he gets a significant amount of water from this. I'd love to see some numbers for air flow rates, incoming and exiting temperatures, and relative humidities. A couple simple data points and a psychrometric chart could tell you a lot real quick. Unfortunately, the article (buried in its fawning praise) seems to suggest that he's only gotten to the point of building a desktop prototype (paraphrase: "even a colleague opening the office door caused it to spin")
If he removes 20% (optimistic, I would think) of the water vapor in one pass, in a 5 m/s wind (stiff breeze) with a 10 m^2 swept area (about the size of a two car garage...pretty big for any form of compressor) at 25 degrees C with a 40% relative humidity (comfortable conditions), then he'll be getting about 1 gallon per minute. That's actually much better than I expected when I started my calculations, but still only about enough to supply one lawn sprinkler at a time. You'd need a lot of these things to irrigate a field. I see it as at best a niche product for water supply to houses in remote, dry areas, not really a major agricultural solution. It could potentially be better coupled with a generator so you can get electricity from it, too.
If it works anything like I suspect, it also won't work well, if at all, below freezing because the condensation would just ice up the blades.
The water has to come from somewhere so these windmills will be drying out the atmosphere. Will it be enough to affect climate? Will you turn into a prune? Will your neighbors? Arida, arida... ...Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink...
-Ancient Mariner
L.A.? No, fortunately! But I see your point. Still, if there was more information available on the device it would be much easier for us to determine how much of an effect these vaporators would have. Unfortunately, there's nothing on how many CC's of water they extract per unit volume of air at what density and temperature with what vapor content, etc., etc., etc. . .
I suspect this technology would see a lot of pilot programs and small density installations before they would ever reach the level of extraction that would have a measurable impact on the environment. After all, it took a lot of years for the cars to smog in L.A.
Cheers
Never attribute to malice what can as easily be the result of incompetence...
Perhaps by buying solar panels, windmills, or a bicycle generator?
The water could at least be used to water golf courses or industrial processes (like beer making).
Yummmy! All that oil and various assorted hydrocarbons washed off all the pavements in the rainwater runoff will make some really healthy and great-tasting beer. The plants will love it too!
Don't you remember all those TV commercials from the EPA some years ago when people used to change their own oil in cars and dispose of the waste oil by pouring it on the ground -- the TV ads said that one gallon of used motor oil will contaminate 1 million gallons of gallons of lakewater and underground aquifer water that otherwise would become our drinking water? They're getting ready to ban internal combustion boat motors from the lakes around here soon.
But, even if windmills like the one described in the article exist, *honest inventors do not work that way*. Like, "hey, I got this wonderful idea, here are some sketchy details, if you want to know more, then you should first finance me with a couple million $$$, or, better, let the guvmint finance me...".
Where can I buy one so that I can use it to power my room-humidifier?
There is at least one international patent (WO2006/017888-A1) lodged by Max Whisson on this invention. On a quick look, the turbine drives a refrigeration compressor and the blades are refrigerated. Then there are some collection baffles over a drip tray to extract the water droplets. The examiner appears to have identified some similar patents and one in particular looks to be problematic to some claims. I guess he will try to modify the invention/patent to avoid the prior art and that is why he doesn't want the revised invention published at the moment.
A few years back I heard of another solution, which was targeted for the Sahara desert. Basically it consisted of a number of long fibres, like hair, on which water would condense and then the water would drip into a container. Its been some time since I have seen anything about it, so I would be curious if anyone else has heard of this and his links to it.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Just what my sietch needs.
But can this model stand up to coriolis storms?
And how easily is it concealed from orbital surveillance?
Sanity is a sandbox. I prefer the swings.
However, he's no scientist or engineer. I wouldn't back him to pick the difference between science and snake oil, and I'm afraid this smells like snake oil.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Keep a watchful eye out for Sand People when you go out to repair the moisture vaporators.
So - we know windmills work - you can buy one...even the 'vertical' kind. We know a windmill can drive a generator and with that you can make electricity. You can buy one of those too. With electricity you can run an air conditioner and/or dehumidifier to cool air and/or extract whatever water there is in the way of humidity. Both of those you can buy.
So nothing that this guy can do is in any way difficult or novel - you can build one with little more than a nice fat chequebook and a suitable mail order catalog.
It's all down to the numbers. How much does it cost to buy? How much does it cost to run? What is it's MTBF and it's MTTR? How much air can it cool? How efficient is it at extracting water? How big is it?
If it's dramatically cheaper/better than present technologies then it's potentially revolutionary - if it's not then this is nothing at all new. Since there are absolutely no numbers quoted, claimed or proven - there is nothing whatever to get excited about.
www.sjbaker.org
If you go to the Australian Patent Office you can track down basic info on Whisson's work.
What you quickly see from the info summary below is that the supposed "Wind water trap" Provisional Patent Application has lasped which might or might not mean ABANDONED, depending on Australian rules.
Provisional Application Details
Patent Application Type - Provisional
Australian Application Number - 2004900912
Applicant(s) - Max Whisson
Inventor(s) - Whisson, Maxwell Edmund
Title - Wind water trap
Status - Lapsed
Filing Date - 25 February 2004
Date of Patent - 25 February 2004
Agent / - Address for Legal Service - Max Whisson - 5/70 Subiaco Road Subiaco WA 6008 Australia
The same effect that causes the drought, means that when the drought breaks huge volumes of moisture sweep over the continent, bringing huge rainfalls that tend to create floods.
So yeah, both.
This thing seems more like a turbine than what we think of as a 'windmill'. Take a squirrel cage fan and turn it on end...
And the principle it uses to extract moisture and cool the air passing by sounds like a vortex tube.
The vortex tube cools air by splitting a stream into two parts, one hot and one cold. More at the wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_tube
...omphaloskepsis often...
From TFA: "Until his inventions are protected by international patents, I'm not going to give details. Max isn't interested in profits - he just wants to save the world - but the technology remains "commercial in confidence" to protect his small band of investors and to encourage others."
Sure it may not be a revolutionary scientific principle. But, as yet that basic concept has not supplied us with anything that would truly supplant the water grid. Putting skepticism aside, this would be a boon for all involved, that is; people who use water. Hopefully time will tell us that it works as advertised, right out of the box.
axis discrepancy indicates hexagons beyond control anomaly
I'm disappointed by how long it took for SANDWORMS to enter the pictures. Come on people!! The fact that I'm just reading a prequel now has nothing whatever to do with my indignance.
Put one of these on a sky scrpaer in New York....
But do you want to drink water condensed in the middle of a major city, with all the interesting pollutants that will condense with it?
Presumably it'll be a nice cup of acid rain, possibly with a whole lot of particulates that settle out thrown into the mix.
Nice.
Real Nice.
http://davesboat.blogspot.com/
Vapourware!!!
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
Before we start dreaming about how this would solve all the problems in the world, it may be worth asking yourself a question or two. Like, what do you know about extracting water from air? I can only think of two methods, really: condensation and osmosis. Osmosis is something that requires chemistry, so it is probably not that. Condensation usually requires a surface to condense on as well as enough cooling to make the relative humidity ~100%. How can a windmill provide that? My gut instinct says this is bogus, but you never know.
To satisfy the average per person water usage, you need about 0.3 m^3 / sec flow at 100% extraction efficiency and 100% humidity at room temperature--scale up for less efficiency and humidity. That's in the ballpark.
However, I don't see how you can maintain those flow rates anywhere other than in the countryside.
Forgive me...
But the likelihood that a small device that spins at any likely speed that a mild blowing wind could possibly generate, could create a pressure differential large enough to condense enough water to run the dozens of gallons of water the average household uses in one day... well let's just say that whole conversation is just a wee bit early for April Fools day.
That said, there is a very interesting technology being developed by the U.S. Army, that employs hygroscopic salts (think Sodium Hydroxide) that are literally capable of pulling gallons of water out of even relatively dry air, then using reverse osmosis to extract fresh water from the solution. Prototypes have already been built, and real machines will soon be placed in arid climates for producing large amounts of potable for U.S. soldiers.
Think what a machine like this could do for the lives of people all over the world in arid places, or places experiencing drought. A machine like this could be built running on solar power, and could produce much or all of the water needed for a village. Water freedom for those in need for the cost of relatively simple machine, that runs for years on sunlight. That would certainly be a transformative technology.
As for the impact on local atmospheric humidity... you have to keep putting thing back into scale. Even if a small village were to pull thoudands, tens of thousands of gallon of water out of the air, it would make little difference, a single cloud contains enough water to fill a good size lake, it's just dispersed over several dozen cubic kilometers... You're only impacting a small local area and pulling a tiny fraction of a percent of the water out of a moving wind... the gradient in humidity change would hardly be noticeable a hundred meters from the condensor.
The problem in any case is probably not technological. As long as it's good business, and good politics to control the flow of water... thirsty people will almost certainly remain thirsty.
I read somewhere a study that said if enough wind power generators were installed in the U.S. to be significant in terms of percentage of power generation for the country, it would in fact likely have a measurable impact on climate. (some data modeling was done). I'd like to suggest that if the generators are also used to dry the air this factor might increase dramatically. If someone knows more about it or is involved in that project I'd like to hear about it. Maybe these new systems would reduce moisture but not reduce windspeed by as much as they would otherwise.
Just voted for your story submission "Global warming deniers speak out" in the "firehose" section. Took me a second, but very funny!
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
look at the very thin "contrails" that trail behind the wingtips of a jet pulling a high-G manueuver.
n 's_Gust_Water_Trap_Apparatus
This is a wingtip vortex and the pressure drop in the core of the vortex is so strong that moisture in the air condenses out, like a string of fog. But pay attention: the strength of this vortex was achieved under very unusual conditinons in free air and by the application of perhaps a thousand horsepower engine....where on earth is a little breeze, however amplified by mechanical advantage, going to achieve such conditions. Also, if you stick your soda straw in such a vortex, how much horse power does it take for you to pull out the condensate?
[yes, you COULD create such a vortex in a wind tunnel, its done all the time in aeronautical reseach. but again you could drive to the store in your Hummer to bring back bottles of perrier and get more water for the fuel expended.]
there is now a wiki page up on the patent inolved...it won't produce more than you could sweat.
http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Max_Whisso
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.