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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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Even at a drop per second it seems optimistic to expect 500mL an hour. I think a drop is less than 0.14mL.
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?
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.
Bugrit! Millenium hand and shrimp!
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.
IIRC, The Professor built one of these out of bamboo, and then made Gilligan pedal the bicycle.
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?
Not everywhere. Which is kind of the point.
And there are places in the world which have high humidity but not ready access to clean drinking water. Pretty much any coastline along an ocean, for example.
Anything which does small scale extraction like this is pretty cool, which is precisely why he's now a finalist for the Dyson Award.
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Even easier ... attach this and a solar panel to a weather vane, so it's always pointed into the wind.
Put it somewhere which has both humidity and wind, but not necessarily clean drinking water.
The differences between a bike-mounted application and a stationary one aren't insurmountable engineering. Just reusing existing stuff. In a lot of places, solar power and prevailing winds will go a long way.
What awesome thing have you designed which could make the world a better place? What's that? Nothing?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Normal water is too heavy when travelling by bike so I always bring dehydrated water instead.
Just invent powdered water, that way...oh, wait.
Yeah. The AC had it as .001mL per drop, which is very low. 0.05 mL per second gives you 180 mL an hour, which is pretty much useless to a person riding a bicycle.
Good point. And if you have all those cyclists breathing hard, they'll produce more CO2 which is a greenhouse gas.