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XPrize's New Challenge: Turn Air Into Water, Make More Than a Million Dollars (cnet.com)
An anonymous reader shares a CNET report: If you can turn thin air into water, there may be more than $1 million in it for you. XPrize, which creates challenges that pit the brightest minds against one another, is hoping to set off a wave of new innovations in clean water -- and women's safety too. The company announced its Water Abundance XPrize and the Anu & Naveen Jain Women's Safety XPrize on Monday in New Delhi. The first competition will award $1.75 million to any team that can create a device able to produce at least 2,000 liters of water a day from the atmosphere, using completely renewable energy, for at most 2 cents a liter. Teams have up to two years to complete the challenge. India is at the center of the world's water crisis, with access to groundwater depleted in some northern and eastern parts of the country. Water has become so scarce in India that natural arsenic has infiltrated the soil and water in certain regions. While there are systems that can currently extract water from the atmosphere, many of them aren't energy-efficient, or generating enough water. "We know that overuse of groundwater resources are causing the water crisis and it's only getting worse," said Zenia Tata, XPrize's executive director of Global Expansion. The $1 million Women's Safety XPrize calls for an emergency alert system that women can use, even if they don't have access to their phones. The alert would have to be sent automatically and inconspicuously to emergency responders, within 90 seconds, at a cost of $40 or less a year. The device would have to work even in cases where there's no cellphone signal or internet access.
The Wikipedia article is interesting. It mentions that one of the better existing devices generates 9,000 liters a year and takes up 6,500 sq. ft. of space. Assuming it scales linearly, 2,000 liters per day would require 527,000 sq ft of space, roughly ten football fields. If you could increase efficiency by a factor of 2 to 10, and similarly reduce costs, this x-prize challenge would be feasible.
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
$44k + $6k fudge factor. I could easiy do it for less than $50k assuming a semi-humid environment. Or a flooded laundry room.
Note that's an off the shelf solution, I'd bet tht this could be reduced by 20% with a more targeted design (no inverters in the system and dc motors in the dehumidifiers)..
TFA gives the example of India running out of ground water. The reason for this is that India provides FREE ELECTRICITY to farmers, giving them no incentive whatsoever to conserve. So they run their pumps 24/7, over watering their fields and depleting aquifers. Ending these idiotic subsidies would do far more good than wasting even more power to condense humidity out of the air.
It would be better for both farmers, the environment, and the Indian economy to replace power subsidies with unconditional money transfers. Then the farmers could decide for themselves what to spend the money on: possibly electricity, but more likely efficient pumps, drought tolerant seeds, fertilizer, etc. Power and water waste would decline, crop yields would improve, and rural incomes would rise.