Slashdot Mirror
Machine Condenses Drinking Water Out of Thin Air
longacre writes "A new $1,200 machine that uses the same amount of power as three light bulbs promises to condense drinkable water out of the air. On display at Wired Magazine's annual tech showcase, the WaterMill 'looks like a giant golf ball that has been chopped in half: it is about 3ft in diameter, made of white plastic, and is attached to the wall. It works by drawing air through filters to remove dust and particles, then cooling it to just below the temperature at which dew forms. The condensed water is passed through a self-sterilising chamber that uses microbe-busting UV light to eradicate any possibility of Legionnaires' disease or other infections. Finally, it is filtered and passed through a pipe to the owner's fridge or kitchen tap.'"
...the dehumidifier!
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
They would get much better results using one of these things in thick, humid air rather than insisting on using thin air.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Dune or its wind traps yet.
Or that no one has mentioned another story on slashdot about extracting water from wind, even if the other one used a windmill to do so.
"He may look like an idiot, and talk like an idiot, but don't let that fool you. He really is an idiot." - Duck Soup
That's what it is, just vaporware !
If these go wide-scale, wouldn't our air be drier? Which in turn would allow more water to be sucked up in the air from the nearby water bodies, which basically means you're getting your water through the air, or wireless (sic) if you will.
Real men read Slashdot articles at -1, bottom up.
Yeah, this is ONLY 200 times less efficient than desalinization.
Criminy.
> I imagine the target market is people who live off the grid...
Such people usually use a clever invention called a well.
> ...a backup in case the grid fails.
It comes with a hand crank?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
"public water authority"?
Ah... you must live in a large built-up area where water comes out of a big pipe provided by a municipality of some sort.
I'm on a dug well with extremely hard water and a tendency to go dry during droughts. Between the filters, UV treatment, water softener, RO filter system, pumps, cisterns, etc... there's probably $5000 for all the bits and parts of my water system. I've spent $1200 on far dumber things than drinking water. For someone with, say, a sulphur problem... $1200 would be darn cheap.
c.
Log in or piss off.
It really pisses me off that even supposedly "quality" newspapers like the Guardian just reprint some PR's press releases with marginal editing rather than doing even the most basic of reasarch or even, god forbid, any thinking.
TFA answers none of the pertinent questions about this device. But reading between the lines and doing a little thinking it's pretty easy to determine this device is going to be useless as anything but a gimmik.
Firstly, how much power does it use? "Three lightbulbs" says TFA, now as far as I'm aware the lightbulb is not a standard measurement for power consumption. But let's be generous and assume they're taling about standard 60-80W bulbs, that about 200W, give or take.
How much water does it produce? The article doesn't say, their website claims "up to" 12L per day, which I'd imagine is operating under optimium conditions (i.e hot air at close to 100% humidity). That's actually not a lot of water, and i'd imagine operating in any real conditions you could halve or quater that amount.
So adding up the numbers, that's 4.8kWh of electicty to produce about 6L of water. Or 800kwh/m^3. This is a ridiculously, hideously energy intensive way to make water, even desalination, which is seen as ecologically unfreindly, uses about 3kwh/m^3, or is about 250 times more efficient.
TFA also states this device is useless below 30% humidity, which removes the last reason one might consider using it, providing water where no other method is possible.
My point in all this is that doing about 2 minutes thinking, and exactly one google search, I have been able to determine that this thing is anything but ecologically friendly, and anything but economic. The journo writing this article for the Guardian, which for those of you who don't know it prides itself on being a "green" newspaper, couldn't even be bothered to do that and reprinted some PR's words wholesale, giving people the impression that what is in fact a toy for rich consumers who want to feel good about being "green" is some kind of ecological miracle device.
It should be a source of lasting shame to any newspaper to allow their editorial content to be used by some idiot for marketing purposes, sadly it's all too common and nobody even seems to notice the extent to which PR is taking over journalism.
OK, it uses the same amount of power as three light bulbs when it's operating, but how long does it take to generate a liter of water? Without this, the "three light bulbs" is meaningless.
Actually, it can get quite humid in the desret. I work with folks who have spent a lot of time in Saudi Arabia and in such places and they report that it is very humid in the summer time. The reason it doesn't rain is that there is no cold dry air masses that come down to mix with the hot humid ones.
There are some places this might be a very nice appliance.
Kevin
A regular dehumidifier that drains into a commercial water filtering pitcher with a UV light beside it might be a workable solution for people on a budget.
I don't know if there are any good kits for steam distillation at home, can anyone point me to one?