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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.
It's called a dehumidifier.
100 % humidity means 30 grams (0.03l) of water per cubic meter. Today in the UK we are at 70%, so lets say theres 20g on a bright autumn morning.
A standard 40ft shipping container is 67.6 cubic m. So it will contain 1.352l of water vapour at any time.
So a complete extraction of air must occur 1500 times a day. That remembers that its in the cold and damp British atmosphere (Its currently 48% humidity in Nairobi). The shipping container will also need to have the pumping equipment in it, so the volume of the extraction tank will be reduced further.
Dave from EEVBlog loves to rip these kinds of scams apart, he's already done a good number of rant-videos on similar "water out of thin air" - systems. I'm waiting excitedly for one on this shit, too!
To condense water out of the air you need to dissipate _at_ _least_ the latent energy of evaporation. That's 2.2MJ/kg or 0.7 kWh*hr in other words, A LOT. If you want to use a solar panel, that would be around 4 square meters to produce that much energy in 1 hour, even taking into account that freezers have >100% efficiency.
So a fairly large 4x4 meter solar panel (that would cost around $5000 to install) will produce around 50 liters of water per day (that's an optimistic estimate), or around 18 tons of water per year. If usable life of the device is 10 years then we're looking at about 200 tons for about $5000, or 4 cents per kg.
To be fair, it's not well-reported but the other half of the technology is these biomass gasifiers: http://allpowerlabs.com/ This is not ambient atmosphere water extraction but extraction from biomass. Also not a scam. Get educated before you throw around your armchair physicist hot takes, guys.
Nothing new here folks.
Commercial Atmospheric water generators have been around for a long time
see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The military routinely use them in desert areas.
They do take a fair amount of energy to run, but not as bad as you might think if transverse flow heat ex changers are used to recover lost heat (and cold).
it's a new type of scam aimed at investors.
Let's call it "Dehumidifier as water supply investor scam"
or shorter : "Dehumidifier scam"
aaaaaaa
I believe the water cannot be drunk without adding some minerals.
Of course it can, though you do need trace minerals somewhere in your diet!
The problem is, water by dehumidifier is expensive, power-wise and doesn't really produce drinkable water.
Open up a dehumidifier sometime. Look at all the crap built up in there.
That's all particulate matter falling out of the air during the dehumidification process.
You REALLY don't wanna drink that stuff.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
It's called soup.
But what I really need is a droid that understands the binary language of moisture vaporators.
So add a filter or whatever. A dehumidifier isn't built to extract potable water, it's designed to produce dry air, so if any crap extracted by the process ends up in the water instead of the air or the machine, that's a bonus.
Small devices for extracting drinking water from the air already exist, but they are fairly expensive to run. This devices presumably changes that, if the resulting water really only costs $0.02/l
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I have a dehumidifier. Over time, there is stuff building up, but compared to the amount of water, it is not much. If the choice was between no water and the dehumidifier water, the choice is really simple.
In addition, filtering the water is a very simple thing to do.
Not actually true (not even close) but they do apparently have a 27% obesity rate, which is more than I would have thought. Definitely the idea that they're "starving" is blatant nonsense.
Hard to believe that there are enough idiots on Slashdot for this to get nodded to +1.
Umm, a quadrillion has 15 zeroes, not 19.
If Zenia Tata doesn't even know that all those *illion numbers are multiples of three zeroes, should she really be "chief impact officer" of the x-Prizes?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
As long as you eat something during the day, you should be okay. And if you don't have food, you have a bigger problem than lack of minerals.
I believe the water cannot be drunk without adding some minerals.
That's an old urban legend which has gotten more and more silly with each retelling. No, there's nothing wrong with drinking distilled water. You get a lot more minerals via the food you eat than from the water you drink.
Don't we already have enough scam artists peddling this? Elementary physics will tell you that it doesn't work. Pulling water out of air works. Yes. But you need to "harvest" a LOT of air and dehumidify it. There's even already machines that do that. They are called dehumidifiers, aptly named. And that takes a LOT of energy. If you plan to do this by solar power, be prepared to drop some pretty penny (and dedicate some real estate) to collecting that energy.
This is only feasible in areas where water is scarce and hard to come by. But guess what: Those are also usually the areas where water vapor in the air is scarce and hard to come by, and hence the whole deal doesn't work!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It burns the hydrogen out of timber, and then condenses some of the water released. I mean, interesting concept, but it doesn't really fill the brief.
That said, actually filling the brief is probably impossible. To fulfill the brief, you'd have to, some way, get rid of the 5GJ of latent heat energy per day - in addition to the energy you add to run your equipment. That's 58kW, constantly.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
Is it the sort of matter that four layers of sari cloth can filter out?
>> It'll never fly
A flying dehumidifier
Now that's a good concept !!
aaaaaaa
I have a revolutionary solution that uses no energy and produces water from the atmosphere but I don't deploy it to cold or dry places, only places where it is raining.
Nullius in verba
"From a report: A new device that sits inside a shipping container can use clean energy to almost instantly bring clean drinking water anywhere"
In Maine, at least, some legislation was enacted to discourage using wood in a variety of systems to heat homes. IT seems that some of those were pretty dirty. Gasifiers were pretty large scale, and usually used a lot of otherwise unused biomass. And were, as mentioned elsewhere, mot often located where the biomass was. One I knew of was located at the chip and lumber mill it served to power.
Then I look at the Fast Company article (git yer own link) and recognize that it seems to be nowhere near any significant source of biomass. Maybe a great demonstration of the dehumidifier, but not an obviously sustainable example to me. But then I only know what I've seen and read about this. surely the smart people know how to deal with the gasifier, the necessary biomass, and the value of the exchange, since this is about turning wood into water by fire. How much will it cost per liter of clean water?
Of course the Fast Company article showed an example where solar power would be the obvious solution. If you think solar power is clean, well, you probably think vodka is dessert. It's really just a sugar, right? And health food, it's pretty much just potatoes, right?
Mind you, to solve clean water problems where there are no other solutions, well, darn, that's a stupid thing to say. Never mind about that.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
But get burned to death.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Legionnaires' disease generator
Going from the image, they could also provide a water transportation system, that way the women wouldn't have to walk ten miles a day with a water bucket on their head. But I guess the men have better things to spend their money on, like $3,000 on a pair of shoes.
The choice is not between no water and the dehumidifier water, it is between dehumidifier water and some more cost effective way of delivering water.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
It's been done before:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
No, you just need to put a humidifier right next to it!
You don't seem to understand. Ambient air is DIRTY.
The cost of regular filter replacement ALONE will drive the price point of the water up beyond the requisite level.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
You're only seeing the macro level stuff.
The other stuff in there makes that water VERY unhealthy to drink.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Ever noticed those things on the top of most big buildings in cities all over the world called Air Conditioning? It creates cold air, it also creates gallons and gallons of water that end up being dumped into the sewers. Why is the water dumped you might ask, because they don't bother to use food safe pipping to collect that water. Yes it adds more expense to the A/C unit but also, on the large buildings, creates thousands of gallons of water a day. You know what else can go on top of those big buildings? Solar Panels, beehives and many other useful things.
I wonder if a modified version of this could be done on mars? There is H20 in the air. Might actually allow for moving around on Mars, and still obtaining fresh water.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
ever seen the constant stream of water draining out of an A/C in the deep south, in the middle of summer?
Republican leadership = Idiocracy
It's my air conditioner.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
There is water in the Martian atmosphere so can we send some of these to Mars now, and have them build a store of drinking water for us when we get there?
How do you think the water recycling mechanisms on the ISS work? Try reading about the Soviet/Russian Elektron system for example.
Back in 1982, I was in science class and came up with something like this using Freon and glass containers with a collector.
Who know it was actually viable. Of course, the Freon would have destroyed any ozone that's left.
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
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.
(Disclosure: I am part of the team that provided the biomass gasifier.)
This is an incorrect claim. The carbon negative claim comes from the fact that the process of gasification produces charcoal as a byproduct, and charcoal does not revert to carbon dioxide without combustion (somewhat simplified but sufficient summary), whereas the biomass nearly entirely reverts to carbon dioxide in the course of decomposition. The more thorough explanation is that the charcoal has a labile (biodegradable) fraction and a recalcitrant fraction. The labile fraction takes years if not decades to decompose, and the recalcitrant fraction essentially doesn't participate in the carbon cycle.
See this on the processes of gasification:
http://www.allpowerlabs.com/gasification-explained
The charcoal is sent through the compost and used as biochar. When used in this way, it enriches the soil for the long term and results in several effects which cause the soil to take up more carbon—firstly, by increasing the soil's capacity to hold on to plant root exudates while stimulating the production of these exudates, and secondly, because the plant exudates stimulate the growth of fungal mycelia.
Fungal mycelia contain a glycoprotein called glomalin, which has a long soil lifetime—roughly 50 years. In this way, the production of charcoal and its use as biochar actually takes carbon out of the carbon cycle and parks it in the soil. Soil fungal glomalin is one of the potential carbon draw-down solutions seriously being considered to draw down carbon dioxide levels from the atmosphere.
See this about glomalin as a carbon sink:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-12731-7
> The problem is, water by dehumidifier is expensive,
> power-wise and doesn't really produce drinkable water
Clean Coal is the answer! It can power the dehumanifiers and be a filter for the undrinkable water.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
We now live in a world where the daily news is hard to believe. Why should Slashdot be different?
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
I hope you realize that Soylent Green is made from All Natural ingredients!
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
That's why you mix pure grain alcohol with distilled or rain water. Preserves your purity of essence.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I'm on the gasifier team from All Power Labs, the company that provided the gasifier genset to the Skysource/Skywater Alliance. Bear with me as I correct some misconceptions here.
Firstly, I would like to make clear that we're not cutting down fresh trees to do this. It is not cost-effective nor sustainable to cut down fresh trees to gasify, especially when there is so much woody biomass waste. There are plenty of companies paying folks to get rid of their biomass waste, including wood chips and nut shells.
Secondly, a bit of nuance required. The machine is not "burning wood"; it is gasifying wood. Wood consists of roughly 80% volatiles, 20% fixed carbon. The gasifier pyrolyzes the wood, which produces tar gases (wood smoke); the tar gases are partially burned while thermally cracking the rest, and the combustion products are percolated through the charcoal. A portion of the charcoal is consumed via reduction reactions that convert the H2O and CO2 from burnning the tar gases into H2 and CO gas, which are then sent to power the engine. Essentially, the gasifier is burning the tar, and un-burning it with the char, then re-burning it in the engine. The heat that would otherwise be dissipated is being used to drive the CHP system.
See our explanation of how gasification works:
http://www.allpowerlabs.com/gasification-explained
Thirdly, the carbon-negative claim comes from the following accounting: the biomass waste almost entirely reverts to carbon dioxide via decomposition, but when run through gasification, a significant fraction of the fixed carbon portion is not consumed, and is pushed out of the gasifier as charcoal. Since charcoal is stable and does not revert to carbon dioxide without combustion, it is effectively removed from the carbon cycle.
Furthermore, we specifically save the charcoal for use as biochar. We send the char through the compost so it can absorb nitrates and phosphates and other nutrients that tend to leach out of compost as leachate. This also fills the char with compost microbes, and conditions the surface to have a humus like quality, which enhances the cation exchange capacity and water holding capacity of soil that is amended with this material. The effect that biochar has on soil parks even more carbon in the soil for the long term. Humified biochar (co-composted biochar) dramatically stimulates the release of plant root exudates (roughly 10 units of exudates per unit of black carbon—humus or humified biochar) and holds on to these exudates for resident microbes to use. These root exudates then stimulate a dramatic increase in soil fungal mycelia (also roughly 10x). This is sometimes referred to as the carbon multiplier effect: 1 unit of black carbon supports 10 units of green carbon (plant exudates) on an ongoing basis, which stimulates the growth of 10 units of white carbon (fungal mycelia).
Fungal mycelia contain a lot of glomalin, a glycoprotein that is a significant carbon sink. Glomalin remains in soil for an estimated 50-60 years.
See this piece from the USDA on Glomalin as a carbon sink:
https://www.ars.usda.gov/news-events/news/research-news/2008/glomalin-is-key-to-locking-up-soil-carbon/
See this piece on how biochar stimulates arbuscular mycorrhyzae (soil fungi symbiotic with plant roots, exchanging phosphorous for plant exudates):
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0038071714002211
You understand this is a novel problem -- too much food, and people don't wanna eat their vegetables.
It is a major goalpost shift from "poor people starving."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
There is a lot of incorrect speculation about the water capture process in the comments here that I can't correct openly just yet because patents are involved, but I would like to address a particular misconception that erupts in the comments every time our claim of carbon negative operation is brought up.
Firstly, the gasifier machine (All Power Labs' PP30 Cogen CS) is intended for use of woody biomass *waste* such as wood chips and nut shells. It is not cost effective (nor sustainable) to cut down a fresh tree to power the machine, especially when there are so many sources of biomass waste that are paying folks to get rid of their wood chips and mountains of nut shells, or are giving it away for free.
When this biomass (I'm talking about wood chips and nut shells) decomposes, it nearly all reverts to carbon dioxide and even methane in the course of decomposition. (If composted properly, a fraction remains as humus, but the overwhelming majority still reverts to CO2, but the humus itself does not last forever, and also reverts to CO2 over time.) This is the base-line we're comparing to. We're not comparing our operation to standing trees.
When biomass is processed in our gasifier, a significant fraction of the fixed carbon is pushed out of the gasifier as a byproduct. A bit of background is needed to understand the process: Woody biomass consists of a volatile fraction, which constitutes roughly 80% of woody biomass, and a fixed carbon fraction, which constitutes roughly 20% of the material. (Somewhere between that 80/20 split is the ash content, which is usually 1-2% of wood.) The gasifier caries out the five processes shown in this graphic:
http://www.allpowerlabs.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Five-Processes-of-Gasification_shorter.png
(If you want to see the entire explanation, see this page: http://www.allpowerlabs.com/gasification-explained )
Charcoal is chemically stable and does not revert to carbon dioxide without combustion. It is resistant to biodegration; the labile carbon in charcoal that has gone through this high temperature process (the fraction that can biodegrade) takes decades to decompose, while the recalcitrant carbon (the fraction that does not normally biodegrade) does not participate in the carbon cycle. Each time the machine runs through a batch of biomass, a fraction of the carbon content of its feedstock is being taken out of the carbon cycle, hence the machine's operation is carbon negative. But when the agricultural use of the charcoal is considered, it is even more carbon-negative:
We send this charcoal through the compost and use it as biochar. (Biochar is charcoal used as a soil amendment.) The composting process doesn't consume the biochar; instead, the pores and high surface area of the charcoal get populated with compost microbes and absorbs nitrates that would normally be lost through denitrification, and makes these nutrients available to plants, while humifying the biochar and making it behave like a form of permanent compost due to its long residence time in the soil. While doing so, biochar dramatically suppresses the production of N2O (nitrous oxide) from compost. Nitrous oxide is roughly 300x more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas. (https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/overview-greenhouse-gases#nitrous-oxide )
Here's the scientific studies on the use of biochar to capture of nitrates from compost, and on biochar reducing N2O emissions:
Plant growth improvement mediated by nitrate capture in co-composted biochar
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep11080
Biochar and denitrification in soils: when, how much and why does biochar reduce N2O emissions?
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep01732
When humified biochar is added to the soil, it results in several effects that continue to store carbon away in the soil. The biochar stimulates the release of plant root exudates because the resident microbes living in the pores of the char exchange nutrients and other biological services with the plant in exchange for sug
This isn't the same as simple burning and furthermore, by your own words, creates a small positive release of carbon into the atmosphere. Only after carefully controlling the byproducts could you hope to eventually after some time become carbon negative. Personally, during a disaster or time of great need, I don't have the faith that the byproducts will be properly cared for and disposed of.
You can get electricity from solar panels. I've got a couple of mobile phone chargers which aren't much more than a laptop battery with an array of small solar panels. But those can recharge even on a cloudy day and recharge six mobile phones. I wish laptop batteries could be recharged in the same way.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
"Are there many Fremen on Dune?"
"I suspect vast numbers, my lord, and extensive windtraps storing liquid water in caches beyond number."
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
This also fills the char with compost microbes, and conditions the surface to have a humus like quality,
Mmmm, char hummus.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Waits for California to say it causes Cancer.
Possible quadruple win?
Clean drinking water.
Safe sewage disposal instead of pollution.
Biochar produced to improve soil.
Sanitation benefits.
https://projects.ncsu.edu/mcki...
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Could your system or a variation thereof use sewage instead of wood as fuel?
California needs water, generates immense quantities of sewage, and has a public receptive to eco-friendly initiatives.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
They likely would be, honestly. But even if not and someone just throws the biochar by the side of the road, it will end up in the soil. Additionally, biochar can be used for water filtration which is quite probably in a disaster relief scenario.
Nothing like sewage is usable in these machines. They will get more fuel-flexible someday (maybe even somehow fuel agnostic) but these are the acceptable feedstocks: http://www.allpowerlabs.com/su...
This reminds me of terra preta, which involved Amazonian farmers using charcoal to improve Amazonian soil. Were you aware of/inspired by this precedent?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
That's very misleading. I remember watching that documentary and those guys saved up for years to buy those.
Thirdly, the carbon-negative claim comes from the following accounting: the biomass waste almost entirely reverts to carbon dioxide via decomposition,
This didnt sound right so i checked and google pointed me to "The Decomposition of Forest Products in Landfills" by J. A. Micales & K. E. Skog. Its introduction already says "These calculations suggest that maximally only 30%, of the carbon from paper and 0-3% of the carbon from wood are ever emitted as landfill gas. The remaining carbon, approximately 28 Tg in 1993, remains in the landfill indefinitely.". maximally 3% is quite far away from "almost entirely". Also if we look at page 7 of the paper, the table details the releases from wood, and from the table two thirds of the carbon releases of these 3% are methane, which could be collected and used/sold.
So one could claim here that wood in a landfill is carbon negative relative to your process.
Another point is the gasification itself, if you convert H2O + CO2 into H2 and CO you triple the amount of carbon eventually released into the atmosphere. Its basic math, just fill in the numbers to balance the equation H2O + CO2 + 2C -> H2 + 3CO. Two thirds of the carbon on the left side are solid, but all of it is a gas (carbon monoxide) on the right which eventually is burned in an engine or other to CO2
I hear that thing can pull a goofball trough a garden hose.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Do you also think jet engines and cars, and hell, campfires are rapidly depleting oxygen at a potentially alarming rate too? Perhaps using garden sprinklers will increase air humidity enough to cause hurricanes as well?
1: That isn't pulled out of the air with a humidifier.
2: Benefitting from a treatment plant that's doing more than just filtering the water.
3: economies of scale.
But hey. Go ahead. Believe in your little fantasy. MUST BELIEVE! Right?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
“Here's a thought: why don't you get the fuck out of your mother's basement, go to Zimbabwe, and build that "water transportation system" yourself ... ?”
.. here's a thought, why don't you fuck off and die .. assuming you are the real 'Thom Stark' .. nuclear apocalypse is so nineteen sixties .. man :]
And you were doing so well up to then
“That's very misleading. I remember watching that documentary and those guys saved up for years to buy those."
That's what they said, but the reality is that they live off the women. You see culturally in that part of the world it's a matriarchal society, the women run the villages while the men sit around discussing important matters of interest.
Reference?
I'd say that drinking too little will damage your teeth much worse than drinking too much (water) ever could.
In capitalist USA corporations control the government.
At 50x the cost of tap water i don't think its an issue.
This devices presumably changes that, if the resulting water really only costs $0.02/l
That is incredibly expensive for water.