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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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_well_(condenser)
Better solution: Have fewer babies.
PM me for an address to which to send that $1M.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
The next X-Prize will be "Turn water into wine".
It's a little over 83 liter of water per hour, presuming this is meant to be running 24 hours a day. So I'm going to guess this is meant to generate enough water for more than a single family. Maybe a good portion of a village. The details are light in the linked article. What's the target area's relative & absolute humidity and the season? Is it even possible for certain areas of the world to do that?
We already have this device, although it will cost you a bit more than $40...
It's called a gun....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I'm I missing something or this have already been done? There's even a Billboard that filter the humidity in air to make drinkable water : http://bigthink.com/design-for...
Elok
Refrigerant based dehumidifiers produce about 2 liters per kilowatt hour (at least in a somewhat damp basement -- probably less efficient in drier areas). So that would be over 40 megawatts of continuous input needed to get 2000 liters per day. Or, at 10 cents per kilowatt hour, $100 of electricity per day to reach that target. Or about 5 cents per liter -- not too far off from the 2 cents needed, and it can be renewable if powered off wind or solar. But then you need to factor the capitalized cost of the equipment in -- a dehumidifier is about $100.00 or so, with a 5 year write off that works out to be 1/10 penny per liter. Not sure how much the solar panels will cost to run it though.
Getting water out of the air is easy.
The hard part is dealing with Sandpeople. They will steal your car, your droids... hell, even your wife.
The hardest part of this XPrize will be finding an interpreter who understands the binary language of moisture vaporators.
Or about 5 cents per liter -- not too far off from the 2 cents needed
Thanks for doing some quick math, but "not far" is not how I would describe the challenge... It is not an order of magnitude (10x) of improvement, but even taking your numbers that still means the new device has to be over twice as efficient in a humid area and probably closer to 4 times as efficient in a much less humid area.
The problem with "free hydrogen" is that it floats. You start to see it about 70km up, and even then it is extremely rare because it is so light that it can get knocked out of Earth's gravitational well pretty easily by our solar wind.
So no, just burning "free" hydrogen just floating around in the atmosphere isn't possible. Good thing too, or else the atmosphere on our planet would be pretty much Hindenburg-like, which would make for a very crispy planet every time there was lightning storm.
$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)..
Am I the only one who thinks that anyone who can make a device that pulls "2,000 liters of water a day from the atmosphere, using completely renewable energy, for at most 2 cents a liter" would be far, far better to patent the machine and then sell it themselves? The device they are describing would be so miraculous - not to mention useful - that the $2 million prize would be small change to what the inventors would get if they commercialized it.
I mean, I'm all for encouraging scientists and don't think that science should only be about making money, but for what they are describing, they really ought to be offering a /real/ prize rather than what would be comparative pocket-change to the device's actual value.
I mean, I read that the cost of desalinization in California costs ~$10,000 per person (and that's just for the cost of the building plant, not the power or the distribution); to desalinate enough water for the whole state would cost close to $400 billion dollars. A machine that could create water for 5 people (2000 liters is a little more than 500 gallons; Americans use about 100 gallons of water a day) for $40 a day would have municipalities breaking down the inventor's door. XPrize really should offer remuneration that reflects the importance and value of the invention.
There is nothing magical about a Personal Locator Beacon (this one was highly reviewed. I am not getting kickbacks. I am not getting referrals. I do not own one.) The $300 buy-in price translates to less than $40/year if it lasts ten years, which it might.
On the other hand, it would be totally fucking useless even if it sent a ping straight to your local PD saying you were being raped, because by the time they show up, it will be over.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
Step 1 go up to Home Depot.
) Step 2 buy a length of hose for $10
Step 3 connect one to each of the hundreds of millions of air conditions that dot the planets.
Step 4 collect the condensation instead of letting it run down the drain.
Use said water for toilet flushing, growing crops etc.
I get 5-10 gallons a day off my AC during the summer. It probably averages out to 2 gallons a day for the whole year.
That would be 200 million gallons of water per day or 73 Billion gallons per year assuming my 2 gallons a day as the average multiplied by 100,000,000 homes. sized air conditioners globally. 1 Billion dollars to retrofit 100million air conditioners. The hoses would last 10 years.
Price per gallon. 1.4 cents per gallon
Oh wait they wanted in Liters. ok. That would be 0.36 cents per Liter. 5.5 time under what they wanted.
Pay up bitches.
California has a similar problem. Farming eats up the bulk of their water usage but they sell water to the farmers anywhere from 1/10 to 1/4 the price that they charge people in the cities. Then they wonder why the farmers are growing dumb ass things such as rice in the desert. Hint rice doesn't grow in the fucking desert.
Note that it uses 7A max (measured), so 0.84kw on maximum setting and about 60l/day.