Slashdot Mirror
Wind Turbine Extracts Water From Air
An anonymous reader writes "Getting access to enough water to drink in a desert environment is a pretty tough proposition, but Eole Water may have solved the problem. It has created a wind turbine that can extract up to 1,000 liters of water per day from the air. All it requires is a 15mph wind to generate the 30kW's of power required for the process to happen. The end result is a tank full of purified water ready to drink at the base of each turbine."
Condensing water directly out of the air avoids a major hurdle of desalination, the evaporation process using heat. By doing it this way, you're machinery will last longer, and nature will naturally evaporate more moisture into the local atmosphere from available sources.
That's assuming municipal water is even available. You need to compare to desalinated water. I used to know those numbers but don't quote me. I think this is comparable, and far, far cheaper than bottled water.
However desalinated water produces copious amounts of brine and uses lots of energy -- two big problems. This wind thing seems far superior.