5 ms·

After the water rationing I heard happening in South Africa’s capital, I took it upon myself to research commercial water from air extractors. A dehumidifier es

After the water rationing I heard happening in South Africa’s capital, I took it upon myself to research commercial water from air extractors. A dehumidifier essentially. There’s a company out in Arizona that had an article published in wired. Zero Mass Water. The article intrigued me. I lived close enough to the ocean, would it work? I had a few panels installed on my roof. I can yield somewhere between 3-15 liters per day if the conditions are right. I can store 90 liters total. I use it as drinking water in my home. I no longer drink from municipal tap water as a result. Yes I shower with it, but I’m not really ingesting as much. Point is I did the panels for the exact same reason this article is the mentioning water wars coming up. At some point we’ll have to be rationing water in cities and I don’t want that for myself or my family.

throwaway1777 7y ago
If it gets to that point laws may be passed to make it illegal to collect rainwater or harvest water from the air. Some states already have such laws.
- madhadron 7y ago
  Let's take Colorado as an example. It's because the water lands there and flows through into the Colorado River and on down to California. There's a treaty among all the states the Colorado River flows through governing water distribution (hint: California gets priority, and there's more water in the treaty than the river). So all that water is not just governed by local law but by interstate treaty. And, frankly, such laws are necessary in many more places than have them. I until recently lived on an island in the Pacific Northwest. Plenty of water, right? Except if you drew down the aquifers too far, the sea would leach in and there goes your fresh water supply. They're currently fighting it out about how much population increase they can support and still have water, how much of the island needs to be left as or put into wetland and forest that efficiently captures water into the aquifers... And on the mainland on both sides of Puget Sound, the water supply is snow melt. If you didn't get enough snow in the winter, you're looking at shortages in the summer. This is going to get worse over the next few decades most likely, alongside an increasing population.
  - gdubs 7y ago
    If you ask most people where their water comes from (beyond the tap) they generally have no clue. In most parts of America, we’ve lived through an incredible time of easy access to clean water. Perhaps that same fortune has led us to complacency and ignorance.
bpodgursky 7y ago
You really need to be careful to supplement with the minerals you would have otherwise picked up from tap water. People get a lot of calcium, potassium etc passively through groundwater / natural water sources. There's a reason people are advised away from drinking distilled water. (not to mention fluoridation, but that's a separate can of worms I won't open)
dredmorbius 7y ago
Are you familiar with how much energy it takes to boil water? Dehumidifying moisture from the air is effectively un-boiling water: you've got to remove the latent heat of vapourisation to convert a gas to a liquid. It's unbelievably energy consumptive, and there is no free lunch.
- abstractbarista 7y ago
  This sounds like a fantastic pairing with solar power! You can grab as much water as needed during the sunny times and store it for the dark times.
  - mrguyorama 7y ago
    That energy is way more efficiently used in water desalination. We also don't know what kind of effects large scale de-humidification would do to the water cycle or environment
- everybodyknows 7y ago
  From the Zero Mass FAQ: >SOURCE is a completely independent drinking water solution; it efficiently utilizes solar power to generate the right amount of electricity required to run its own system to produce water and charge the battery that ensures you can dispense water at night. So yes, not free -- you have to pay for a solar electric system as part of the package. Manufacture of which itself consumed considerable energy and clean water, somewhere else on the planet.
trothamel 7y ago
Offhand, how do you take care of other uses of water? It looks like flushing a toilet takes about 4L of water, so it seems like that would use up an entire bad day.
- o-__-o 7y ago
  There are toilets that consume a fraction of that. Upgrade your toilet

throwaway1777 7y ago

If it gets to that point laws may be passed to make it illegal to collect rainwater or harvest water from the air. Some states already have such laws.

madhadron 7y ago
Let's take Colorado as an example. It's because the water lands there and flows through into the Colorado River and on down to California. There's a treaty among all the states the Colorado River flows through governing water distribution (hint: California gets priority, and there's more water in the treaty than the river). So all that water is not just governed by local law but by interstate treaty. And, frankly, such laws are necessary in many more places than have them. I until recently lived on an island in the Pacific Northwest. Plenty of water, right? Except if you drew down the aquifers too far, the sea would leach in and there goes your fresh water supply. They're currently fighting it out about how much population increase they can support and still have water, how much of the island needs to be left as or put into wetland and forest that efficiently captures water into the aquifers... And on the mainland on both sides of Puget Sound, the water supply is snow melt. If you didn't get enough snow in the winter, you're looking at shortages in the summer. This is going to get worse over the next few decades most likely, alongside an increasing population.
- gdubs 7y ago
  If you ask most people where their water comes from (beyond the tap) they generally have no clue. In most parts of America, we’ve lived through an incredible time of easy access to clean water. Perhaps that same fortune has led us to complacency and ignorance.

bpodgursky 7y ago

You really need to be careful to supplement with the minerals you would have otherwise picked up from tap water. People get a lot of calcium, potassium etc passively through groundwater / natural water sources. There's a reason people are advised away from drinking distilled water. (not to mention fluoridation, but that's a separate can of worms I won't open)

dredmorbius 7y ago

Are you familiar with how much energy it takes to boil water? Dehumidifying moisture from the air is effectively un-boiling water: you've got to remove the latent heat of vapourisation to convert a gas to a liquid. It's unbelievably energy consumptive, and there is no free lunch.

abstractbarista 7y ago
This sounds like a fantastic pairing with solar power! You can grab as much water as needed during the sunny times and store it for the dark times.
- mrguyorama 7y ago
  That energy is way more efficiently used in water desalination. We also don't know what kind of effects large scale de-humidification would do to the water cycle or environment
everybodyknows 7y ago
From the Zero Mass FAQ: >SOURCE is a completely independent drinking water solution; it efficiently utilizes solar power to generate the right amount of electricity required to run its own system to produce water and charge the battery that ensures you can dispense water at night. So yes, not free -- you have to pay for a solar electric system as part of the package. Manufacture of which itself consumed considerable energy and clean water, somewhere else on the planet.

trothamel 7y ago

Offhand, how do you take care of other uses of water? It looks like flushing a toilet takes about 4L of water, so it seems like that would use up an entire bad day.

o-__-o 7y ago
There are toilets that consume a fraction of that. Upgrade your toilet