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Bicycle Bottle System Condenses Humidity From Air Into Drinkable Water
Diggester writes The weight of water limits how much can be brought on a long bike ride. There isn't always an option to stop and fill up from a clean stream or drinking fountain, but water could be obtained from a different source: the air. Austrian industrial design student Kristof Retezár has created Fontus: a prototype of a water bottle system that condenses humid air into clean, drinkable water. His design made him a finalist for the 2014 James Dyson Award.
So, a small wind turbine (or taking turns on a bike), and any hot humid area where clean drinking water can be scarce is a good fit for this.
I can see this applying to FAR more than cycling.
Interesting.
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You cannot produce a maximum of 500ml/hour and 1 drop/minute. 1 drop per minute is approximately 3.9ml/hour. This sounds like a more realistic figure than 500ml.
http://www.who.int/water_sanit...
And on a downhill bike ride, the weight of water increases your braking distance.
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I remember 2 decades ago in high school they had distilled water squirty bottles to use in experiments. If you got it in your mouth it tasted rather bad. Since this is a kind of distillation shouldn't the water taste foul?
So, a mini-windtrap? Kinda cool.
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"According to a description of the product on the award site, solar panels generate the electricity needed to cool the upper chamber of the device, while the bottom heats up. As the bike moves forward, air is pulled in, and then slowed and cooled as it moves through that upper chamber."
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A long time since I took the survival course, but when considering being downed at sea I seem to recall taking the salt water, forming a pool of it the raft, and allowing it to condense on a slanted surface above it and drip potable water into a container. This device might work well in a warm, sunny, floating on the ocean environment where humidity and energy from the sun are plentiful.
Apparently the industrial design curriculum doesn't cover thermodynamics. Condensing water at room temperature requires shedding about 680 watt-hours of energy per liter, and thermoelectric coolers tend to burn off more than twice the energy they pump (depends on a few variables, but practical devices in practical situations usually fall in that ballpark). You'd need somewhere near a constant half-kilowatt to provide for one person's normal water consumption. Much more if they're exercising or in a hot environment.
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Here in Orlando, FL you can just hold up an empty glass and slice moisture out of the air with a butter knife. It'd work well here.
I think there's actually a great market for something like this if it can be made to be light, compact and durable. Something small and light to take on backcountry camping trips to supplement drinking water.
Bigger versions of it, if they could be made to be cheap and reliable enough, could be extremely useful for off-grid permanent installations. Case in point, Canaveral National Sea shore is a popular beach park here. The bathrooms on the beach are all dry bathrooms. There's no water to wash your hands with, let alone the possibility of drinking water. A stationary version of this with a small tank would be awesome. Same deal with bathrooms we've had to use in other state/national parks and when on safari in Africa.
If a bigger stationary installation of this worked well enough, I'd consider having one here for my house for emergency use. It would only need to produce a modest amount of water.
How much does the device weigh? A camelback with 1 liter is about 4 pounds / 1.8 kilos?
Plus the camelback is multipurpose and can carry snacks, tools, etc.
You can also stop and get more water. I know I know.... Crazy talk.
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Where the guy was told the water bottle would gather water from the air, so he shouldn't even bother to fill it up?
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1 drop per minute is at 20C and 50% RH = 3ml/hr (0.05ml/drop). At that temp/RH, there is 0.01 kg moisture per kg of air. But in hot, humid weather (say 35C and 90% RH), there is 4x as much moisture in the air. More importantly, at 20/50% the dew point is 9C, or a delta T of 11C that the (horribly inefficient) peltier cooler must keep just to condense moisture. At 35C, and 90% RH, the dew point is 33C, requiring only a 2C delta T across the cooler, allowing more of the power to be used for the latent heat of condensation.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Totally practical along the foggy coastlines. There are moisture retention fabrics that are then used for drip systems to water plants in drought regions. This invention seems like another advancement in that line of tech. Very practical for an outdoor rabbit hut.
This idea that distilled water is somehow bad for you is largely a myth. Yes, under the right circumstances it's a problem but those circumstances are as likely as needing asteroid collision insurance for your car. You have to drink nothing but distilled water in insanely high amounts with no food intake in order to get to the point that the distilled water causes illness. That's not going to be an issue here, it might be an issue if you're on a lifeboat and haven't had food in a few weeks and nothing but distilled water to drink.
One way or another, this will be vapourware.....
a) It is "a gadget created by Kristof Retezár, an industrial design student at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna."
b) It takes water vapour, or humidity out of the air.
Hmm, the humour and sarcasm seem to have been be lost on you.
There's a readable version of the diagram image on http://www.designboom.com/tech...
I've trained for (and completed) a marathon and done some long-ish bike rides (several hours), not to mention taken long hikes and hours of physical labor / yard work in both the burning heat and freezing cold. The water provided by a Camelbak or a couple bottles was enough to keep things together, and the extra weight wasn't exactly killing me or making the activity impossible. If you are decently hydrated to start with, doing an hour of reasonably difficult exercise is perfectly doable with no water at all.
Seems that this is kind of over-design for the vast majority of activity profiles -- people who work out for an hour a day are already rare enough, let alone people who work out long enough to have water weight be a significant part of the weight they are moving.
Just invent powdered water, that way...oh, wait.
It really is not a real problem that needs a solution.
Its a technology that needs a demonstration platform. I wouldn't read too much into cycling being used for these demonstrations.
Good point. And if you have all those cyclists breathing hard, they'll produce more CO2 which is a greenhouse gas.
There may be a non trivial issue if you take on severe exercise and then shortly ingurgitate a lot of water (distilled or poor in salts), which happens after you sweat a lot of electrolytes. But that'd be your own fault for being dumb. Some people do kill themselves with water poisoning, and that's not distilled water.
Correct me if I am wrong, but distilled water is harmful to the body as it flushes out salts and minerals. It can actually kill you at larger quantities. So why exactly should I drink distilled water when my body needs the minerals (i.e. during sport)?
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That's right, you can't, because nobody has objectively asked and tried to answer that question, not the inventors of such devices and not you. It's a question that ought to be answered BEFORE we add yet another variable to the climate system. not AFTER we have hundreds of thousands or millions of the devices in operation.
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Do you actually have data on how much moisture must be removed from the atmosphere before measurable effects are seen, either in micro- or macro-climate? I doubt it. That is the problem. Your suspicion doesn't cut it.
Before you leave the house, spoon a couple of scoops of powdered sports-water into the bottom of the container?
... is that they'd better have those units in the south range repaired by midday or there'll be hell to pay.
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I'm trying to decide if you're joking or not. The article says 0.5 liters per hour, which is frankly less than you sweat, so in this case it's a zero sum. You also expire a half kilo of water every night by breathing...I think we don't need to worry about sandworms just yet.
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No way this is replacing my stillsuit ...
I'm currently cycle touring in central Africa and while this sounds like a potentially useful addition to my water supply solution (Katadyn water filter), it would not be a replacement for it. The main reason is that at 0.5 litres an hour (max capacity) it just wouldn't produce enough water for me. Currently, in ~30C temperatures with 80%+ humidity, riding 80km+ a day, I'm getting though upwards of 6 litres each day. It's thirsty work!
Clever but as they've just shown the entire world how to make it we'll have to see who actually brings it to market first.
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