3 ms·

WATER: Traditional municipal water pipes aren't perfect either. They're expensive to install and maintain, and it takes energy to pump all that water around and

by tito 7y ago

WATER: Traditional municipal water pipes aren't perfect either. They're expensive to install and maintain, and it takes energy to pump all that water around and maintain pressure. Think about Flint [1], think about the upcoming shortage of groundwater in India. The cost of traditional water infrastructure is higher than estimated. There is real need for air capture of water. Here's an interesting project to follow, perhaps you have seen it already: "The winner of the Water Abundance XPrize creates enough water for 100 people every day by making an artificial cloud inside a shipping container." [2] FARMS: That's exactly right, agriculture uses much of our land today. Most of that is livestock. "Livestock is the world’s largest user of land resources, with grazing land and cropland dedicated to the production of feed representing almost 80 % of all agricultural land." [2] So much of meat production will be made using cellular agriculture. Livestock is way too resource intensive, cattle will go extinct. And the rest of it, well 2-dimensional farming seems inefficient so let's see what building up looks like. A single shipping container can hold many acres worth of short crops that can be grown on top of eachother. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis [2] https://www.fastcompany.com/90253718/a-device-that-can-pull-drinking-water-from-the-air-just-won-the-latest-x-prize https://www.fastcompany.com/90253718/a-device-that-can-pull-... [3] http://www.fao.org/animal-production/en/ http://www.fao.org/animal-production/en/

gus_massa 7y ago
About [2]: It was discussed in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18301190 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18301190 (122 points | Oct 25, 2018 | 129 comments). Some takeaway of the comments: They don't extract water from air, they partially burn (gasify) biomass to produce water, carbon dioxide and charcoal. They extract the water from the fumes where it is more concentrated. (It's strange that they can dump all the heat, they need some good coolers.) The cost is 1/2 of the cost of the desalinization, 2 times the cost of calling a water truck for the town, and 100 times the cost of tap water in a city. But the cost they quote is only the cost of the equipment, they don't include maintenance and they don't include the cost of the biomass. The places were biomass is cheap and there is plenty of biomass are the places where there is enough water to grow crops or trees. It's not efficient to buy wood just to burn it to extract the water. Moreover, growing the tree will consume much more water than the water that you can extract with this device. Also, it's cheaper to call a water truck than enough truck with all the wood to produce the same amount of water. > A single shipping container can hold many acres worth of short crops that can be grown on top of each other. The plants need sunlight. It is possible to replace it with artificial light, but it is more expensive. At industrial scales it is worth only for plants that have a very high ratio of price per weights, not simple crops.

by tito 7y ago

gus_massa 7y ago

About [2]: It was discussed in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18301190 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18301190 (122 points | Oct 25, 2018 | 129 comments). Some takeaway of the comments: They don't extract water from air, they partially burn (gasify) biomass to produce water, carbon dioxide and charcoal. They extract the water from the fumes where it is more concentrated. (It's strange that they can dump all the heat, they need some good coolers.) The cost is 1/2 of the cost of the desalinization, 2 times the cost of calling a water truck for the town, and 100 times the cost of tap water in a city. But the cost they quote is only the cost of the equipment, they don't include maintenance and they don't include the cost of the biomass. The places were biomass is cheap and there is plenty of biomass are the places where there is enough water to grow crops or trees. It's not efficient to buy wood just to burn it to extract the water. Moreover, growing the tree will consume much more water than the water that you can extract with this device. Also, it's cheaper to call a water truck than enough truck with all the wood to produce the same amount of water. > A single shipping container can hold many acres worth of short crops that can be grown on top of each other. The plants need sunlight. It is possible to replace it with artificial light, but it is more expensive. At industrial scales it is worth only for plants that have a very high ratio of price per weights, not simple crops.