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A Device That Can Pull Drinking Water From the Air Just Won the Latest XPrize (fastcompany.com)
Two years ago, XPrize, which creates challenges that pit the brightest minds against one another, announced that it would give any startup or company $1 million that can turn thin air into water. This month, it announced that the challenge has been concluded. From a report: A new device that sits inside a shipping container can use clean energy to almost instantly bring clean drinking water anywhere -- the rooftop of an apartment building in Nairobi, a disaster zone after a hurricane in Manila, a rural village in Zimbabwe -- by pulling water from the air. The design, from the Skysource/Skywater Alliance, just won $1.5 million in the Water Abundance XPrize. The competition, which launched in 2016, asked designers to build a device that could extract at least 2,000 liters of water a day from the atmosphere (enough for the daily needs of around 100 people), use clean energy, and cost no more than 2 cents a liter.
"We do a lot of first principles thinking at XPrize when we start designing these challenges," says Zenia Tata, who helped launch the prize and serves as chief impact officer of XPrize. Nearly 800 million people face water scarcity; other solutions, like desalination, are expensive. Freshwater is limited and exists in a closed system. But the atmosphere, the team realized, could be tapped as a resource. "At any given time, it holds 12 quadrillion gallons -- the number 12 with 19 zeros after it -- a very, very, big number," she says. The household needs for all 7 billion people on earth add up to only around 350 or 400 billion gallons. A handful of air-to-water devices already existed, but were fairly expensive to use. The new system, called WEDEW ("wood-to-energy deployed water") was created by combining two existing systems. One is a device called Skywater, a large box that mimics the way clouds are formed: It takes in warm air, which hits cold air and forms droplets of condensation that can be used as pure drinking water. The water is stored in a tank inside the shipping container, which can then be connected to a bottle refill station or a tap.
"We do a lot of first principles thinking at XPrize when we start designing these challenges," says Zenia Tata, who helped launch the prize and serves as chief impact officer of XPrize. Nearly 800 million people face water scarcity; other solutions, like desalination, are expensive. Freshwater is limited and exists in a closed system. But the atmosphere, the team realized, could be tapped as a resource. "At any given time, it holds 12 quadrillion gallons -- the number 12 with 19 zeros after it -- a very, very, big number," she says. The household needs for all 7 billion people on earth add up to only around 350 or 400 billion gallons. A handful of air-to-water devices already existed, but were fairly expensive to use. The new system, called WEDEW ("wood-to-energy deployed water") was created by combining two existing systems. One is a device called Skywater, a large box that mimics the way clouds are formed: It takes in warm air, which hits cold air and forms droplets of condensation that can be used as pure drinking water. The water is stored in a tank inside the shipping container, which can then be connected to a bottle refill station or a tap.
That's not infeasible. It's just incredibly inefficient, that's all.
1500 times 67.6 cu m is just over 100,000 cubic metres.
I just pulled up a building-site fan - Clarke CAM110 30â Drum Electric Fan (110V) - 350W
Max air flow 200m3/min.
So it would take 500 minutes to pull through that much air, which is just 8 1/3 hours. So just a bog-standard, low-power building-site fan on the side, ducted to pull fresh air in, circulate it through the system, and then blow it out, would be able to do three times that in a day. I'm sure a lower power solution would exist to do just what the system can take and no more.
Take into account the halved humidity and it's still viable.
The question is really whether or not after pumping 100,000 cubic metres of outside air through it the water is contaminated with all kinds of crap, not to mention having to clean and change filters constantly. That kind of fan would build up a layer of dust-strands, hairs, etc. with in days even in a relatively clean air, then you're blowing that through a system trying to collect water from it, and having to filter it. Things like airborne dust etc. are going to need lots of filters in the path of both the air, and the water collection.
That's not to say it's completely ridiculous. It would, indeed, be able to make water out of thin air. I would just posit that it's probably easier and cheaper to ship a few bottles, or dig a well.
Especially if you consider that to be self-powered, it probably needs an entire roof of solar - anywhere people are desperate for water, shipping an entire container of very expensive (and valuable, which is different) electronics and metals out there probably is going to be subject to short-sighted selfishness, otherwise known as theft. Solar panels and refrigeration equipment like that is going to be worth a fortune in such a place.
Though it could probably "profit" after a number of years of flawless operation without maintenance costs, I could easily imagine that production costs, transport, maintenance, etc. would make it less viable than just shipping some Evian or a well-borer.
And it has zero value in any place that's not literally desert... nobody's going to buy an incredibly expensive box in order to get a few thousand litres out of it if there's a river even within a hundred miles. Thus the market is really quite tiny.
It's the kind of thing you'll see in a science museum in 50 years, just sitting them offering a free cup of water to visitors.
If only there was a device that could--can't think of a good new verb for it--lets say, "move" water from places we do have, and then it could travel through some kind of cylindrical containing device that held the water molecules in, and pushed this liquid medium through the hollow cylinder to the place where its needed.
How do they move oil? I can't think of it. But it's like, they send oil thousands of miles.
Too bad I'm pretty sure it only works for oil and not for water because nobody makes any goddamn money from saving lives.
Have a look at their web site: https://islandsky.com/products...
They have a range of these things and seem to be selling a reasonable number. Most are much smaller than required for the X Prize. So they stuck a few of them in a shipping container, and added a biomass generator to meet the carbon neutral / low running cost requirements.
You need a lot of energy for those things. The 378L/day one (at 50% RH) needs 4.2kW. They claim that biofuel gassifiers are already in use in India.
It's marginal but interesting. Their use case if where there is local water available but over-use is causing problems like acute droughts.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
"The 378L/day one (at 50% RH) needs 4.2kW"
The bigger ones have 30KW diesel generators in them.
This isn't "water for free, forever", this is "a pittance of water at ongoing costs, fuelled by oil or wood or similar burning".
Sure, you can slap some solar panels and maybe you'd get your 4.2KW out of them... but then the purchase cost is going to be prohibitive and the running costs are going to be non-zero even then (water tanks and solar aren't the kind of things you can just leave unmaintained in a desert forever). It also makes it a target ripe for theft.
I would hazard that if you put a 30KW diesel generator, plus fuel, or 4KW of solar panels, etc. in a place where people can't afford/obtain water, it won't be long before bits "go missing" and end up on the black market in exchange for... well... some water, eventually, most likely.
From their own FAQ:
What happens when thereâ(TM)s low humidity in the air?
When the humidity is low, all air to water machines are challenged. Skywater machines are not designed for dry or cold climates and are not marketed there.
The carbon-negative claim is based upon the supposition that in its deployment, the magic water box would occasionally be near a forest with abundant dead trees that are at risk of spontaneous atmospheric carbon liberation.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
True enough, assuming someone competent enough to dig/drill the well is present. Although I can't speak to people everywhere, it seems like most USian folks displaced by natural disaster seem to sit around and wait for someone to deliver salvation in frustration-free packaging.
This system can also be deployed to regions without plentiful carbon rich dead fall and powered by solar collectors and batteries.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway