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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."
Disclaimer: just my guesses:
1. Does this design perform better than other windmill designs (for generation).
No; conventional windmills have long been designed to extract the maximum amount of mechanical work from the air. This new windmill is not designed to do that, and works the same in any wind direction.
2. What will this do to the atmospheric conditions?
Small decrease in humidity.
3. If everyone has one....will it no longer rain?
It will still rain. The windmills couldn't possibly collect all evaporating air in a short radius. Even if they did, clouds call still blow in from over oceans and lakes.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
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!
Umm, any water collected by these things would end up either: (a) re-evaporating locally or (b) running into a river. In the first case, there's no net change in water distribution. In the second case, the fresh water ultimately ends up in an ocean, restoring the salinity levels.
At any rate, we've been mining huge amounts of water out of ancient aquifers for decades without worrying about ocean salinity. But that is still an insignificant drop in the bucket compared to the real impact on salinity: the massive influx of fresh water that is currently coming from from melting polar ice.
What's the mechanism that causes the air to cool?
TFA doesn't say, but there's a couple of ways it could be done. Just dropping air pressure would tend to cool the air somewhat, and that will happen on the leeward side of any airfoil moving through the atmosphere. When aircraft fly into icing conditions, the ice tends to collect on the upper surfaces of the wings where the air pressure is lower.
One other possibility is using a windmill to drive a Sterling-cycle engine. That will pump heat from one cylinder to the other, and water will condense on the cool side.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I believe that it's works based off of the ideal gas law, more more specifically, Gay-Lussac's law. The blades reduce the air pressure in close vicinity, causing a drop in temperature. Colder air can't hold as much moisture so some of it condenses out as water.
What gets me is that this machine will have to work really hard in drier climates to extract water, as you essentially need to lower air to its dewpoint temperature to get water to condense out. In a desert, the dewpoint can be as low as 35F on a 100F degree day. This means that you need to lower the air in the column to below 35F to get any results. Fortunately, most places aren't always that bad when it comes to a "dry heat". Since it's powered by the wind, you really can't claim it as being energy hungry, just maybe not effective enough to necessarily meet demand.
1920s? Israel didn't exist from 70 AD to 1948....Do you mean the British started this in the post-Ottoman period?
Even more incidentally, one reason there were so few trees in the first place is that the Ottomans imposed a tax on having a tree on one's property at some point.
Monarchies have the silliest taxes....
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
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.
I have read of such things. Here is a good summary. I know it's possible, but this just smells of a scam. No details, no patent, and a plea for investors. Fishy.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
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
That's called not learning from mistakes. Look at the Netherlands for a better example of how to learn from your mistakes:
A long while ago the Netherlands was just plain land and a few bits of dredged up water that now are also called land (and that annoy the **** out of us in most things - whaddayamean, I can't be at -20 feet in my car?). They then dredged up the Noordoostpolder without keeping a water bit between it and the "mainland". The country on the previously shore dried out and the farmers complained. They then dredged up Flevoland and did include the water barrier (look at the map - it's the big "island" in the middle). This worked.
Just look at what you're doing wrong and don't do it wrong next time. Although, given the examples, you could also say that when Americans make a failure, they make one hell of a large failure.
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.
Because Phillip Adams is a highly public figure in Australia, who is hardly likely to be knowingly involved in a "scam". Nor would he need to be. That is not to say that he cannot be foolish or mislead, or taken in by bad physics, or the victim of a scam himself.
You know what they say about opinions. They're all fabulous!
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.
Ask, and you shall receive.
t her/getForecast?query=New+Zealand
t her/getForecast?query=Wellington%2C+New+Zealand
The lowest humidity is:
http://www.weatherunderground.com/cgi-bin/findwea
Observed at: Dunedin Aerodrome Aws, New Zealand
Elevation: 3 ft / 1 m
Temperature: 78 F / 26 C
Humidity: 28%
Dew Point: 51 F / 10 C
Wind: 17 mph / 28 km/h / from the North
Wind Gust: -
Pressure: 29.65 in / 1004 hPa (Falling)
And for good measure, their capital is:
http://www.weatherunderground.com/cgi-bin/findwea
[Partly Cloudy]
68 F / 20 C Partly Cloudy
Humidity: 56%
Dew Point: 52 F / 11 C
Wind: 29 mph / 46 km/h / 12.9 m/s from the North
Wind Gust: 44 mph / 70 km/h / 19.5 m/s
Pressure: 30.01 in / 1016 hPa
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.