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Turning Arabian Desert air into bottled water
- Arn_Thor 6y agoHugely inefficient and expensive, but if the energy used is renewable I guess there's no downside. Certainly seems to be more environmentally friendly than desalination which disrupts sea life in coastal waters.
- TimSchumann 6y agoThere's still externalities to be considered, even if the energy is renewable. But even accounting for that, I don't see why something like this would be preferable to just desalinating ocean water and transporting it via some method. Unless I'm missing something with the energy needed to pull the water out of the air, or they've made a huge leap in miniaturizing the tech... this whole idea is a non-starter IMO.
- ISL 6y agoIt is a question that can be addressed quantitatively with two thermodynamics questions. Size matters not. How many joules of energy are required to extract a liter of water from the air (average dewpoint, temperature) at the site in question compared with the number of joules of energy required to remove the salt from a liter of the available seawater?
- adrianN 6y agoDesalination has the additional problem that you need to dispose of all that salt somehow. You can't easily dump it back into the ocean without risking the local ecosystem. It needs to be diluted over a fairly large area. That adds some cost. But it seems like this is more of a novelty and targets rich people, like bottled glacier water.
- pankajdoharey 6y agoSo here is my doubt if there is a Air polluting source nearby how does it affect the quality of water? What happens to the pollutants like carbon monoxide , nitrates present in air. They might get dissolved in water at the time of condensation?
- Arn_Thor 6y agoI assume the water will be filtered. There's a reason air conditioner drippings are not recommended sustenance.
- pankajdoharey 6y agoEfficiency is the only thing I can think of as explained in the video by thunderf000t here https://youtu.be/aPvXnmBIO7o https://youtu.be/aPvXnmBIO7o
- sudosysgen 6y agoThere's still a downside, in that it takes more resources and more energy to get that water than just shipping it. Pipes are very, very efficient.
- Arn_Thor 6y agoSure, but pumping still takes energy. Not to mention the cost, monetary and environmental, of building pipes from the nearest (very ample) fresh water source in.. the mountains of Georgia?
- sudosysgen 6y agoYes. But pipes are very, very, very efficient, and cheap, high-throughput, and has very low environmental cost.
- dehrmann 6y ago> I guess there's no downside Just opportunity cost.
- Johnythree 6y agoNot necessarily inefficient. If you use transverse flow heat exchangers the "cold" is not lost but maintained in the condensing area, so that little thermal energy escapes.
- jrgd 6y agoTotally feels like the Dune’s Fremens!
- aaron695 6y agoThis is not possible. But what would be interesting is if scientists actually watched what happens. They have done this with cults around the 'end of the world' type scenarios. How the cult leaders and followers react when the impossible doesn't happen can be psychologically useful to know. I haven't read this book so don't recommend it, but I think it's cool it exists - https://www.amazon.com/When-Prophecy-Fails-Leon-Festinger/dp/1614272905 https://www.amazon.com/When-Prophecy-Fails-Leon-Festinger/dp...
- hhs 6y agoIf interested, this is the company’s website: https://www.zeromasswater.com/rexi/source/ https://www.zeromasswater.com/rexi/source/ And this provides funding info: https://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/news/2020/06/23/zero-mass-water-company-gets-50m-in-funding.html https://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/news/2020/06/23/zero-mas...
- arrosenberg 6y agoAtmospheric condensers? Kataan would be proud.
- dehrmann 6y agoProbably one of the best TNG episodes.
- soylentcola 6y agoAlso Uncle Owen, if we go back a little farther and across franchises.
- xondono 6y agoThere’s no way this is cheaper than just shipping water from other parts of the world. I don’t even believe that “comparable to Fiji price”
- brownbat 6y agoThey even admit in the article it's less efficient than desalinization, which is itself hard to make efficient.
- simonebrunozzi 6y agoSpeaking of water and desert, I have an interesting anecdote to recount. My wife's grandfather, Ugo, an Italian army officer and engineer, served in Ethiopia and then during WWII as part of the "genio" (logistics) unit. At some point during the war he was stationed in the desert (I think Libya), where the Italian army was supposed to either attack or mount resistance against the British troops. Well, the Germans had to somehow take over control, because the Italians were poorly organized and managed. One day Erwin Rommel [0], "the desert fox", shows up at the camp. Consider that this was a camp in the middle of the desert, defended by the Italian garrison and probably some german troops too, with no refrigerators for food, etc. He examines the place and the troops, and then the Italian commander offers him water to drink. To Rommel's surprise, the water was icy cold. He couldn't believe it. The commander introduces him to Ugo, who then proceeds to show to Rommel how he ingeniously created a system to cool water by using water evaporation in metal bins, and the power of the hot desert sun. Ugo was impressed by the encounter, shared it with his son, who then shared it with my wife and then with me. I thought this story was worth sharing. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Rommel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Rommel
- 082349872349872 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaporative_cooler#Applications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaporative_cooler#Application... The persian qanat/windcatcher architecture would be easy to spot well after the fact, but although we do know the spaniards in Alta California would hang woven bags in their courtyards to promote evaporative water cooling, because textiles decompose so quickly we wouldn't have known if all we had were their ruins. https://www.moonrandolphhomestead.org/homestead-journals/2018/7/16/the-desert-water-bag https://www.moonrandolphhomestead.org/homestead-journals/201... is an example of something which my great grandmother had told me about, but I've never seen in practice. (one of these days I hope I may put into practice the knowledge about how to safely crank-start an automobile.)
- h0l0cube 6y agoAnd then there's this from Australia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coolgardie_safe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coolgardie_safe
- gsich 6y agoAnother unrealistic project.
- helsinkiandrew 6y agoThis reminds me of the Fontus bike water bottle (that didn't end well) https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/fontus-the-self-filling-water-bottles#/ https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/fontus-the-self-filling-w... Whilst it doesn't seem very cost effective - I imagine it's quite a good marketing gimmick for 'eco' bottled water?
- donatj 6y agoEvery time anyone tries to sell you something that pulls water from air, dismiss it offhand. It’s a scam. Often by a startup with zero math skills. It’s scientifically impossible to do without massive amounts of energy, and never worth it.
- __m 6y agoThis will make a nice thunderf00t video, unless he got tired of debunking these projects
- sdia 6y agoLOL, these guys do not know about thunderf00t!
- dwd 6y agoThere are similar products that generate water as a byproduct of airconditioning (which is a must in a desert climate). I know some guys that are selling these in the Middle East and mining operations in the Aus outback. https://seas-sa.com/awa-modula-systems/ https://seas-sa.com/awa-modula-systems/
- gsich 6y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc7WqVMCABg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc7WqVMCABg Unrealistic scam.
- cafard 6y agoIt seems to me that Boy Scout Manual told one how to make a "solar still" to condense water from the air. But it has been a while since I had a copy.
- floppiplopp 6y agoOh no. facepalm Another: What are the laws of thermodynamics... Every couple of years people will fall for this particular scam. Listen, you can never ever do this in any way that is even close to efficient, especially in arid regions, because physics.
- phaus 6y agoIf they really want to give people the experience of drinking water in the Desert they should do what the Army did and sit pallets of water bottles in the sun so all the Soldiers could get a nice, plastic-flavored, scalding hot drink of bottled carcinogens.
- latchkey 6y agoI imagine that the risk of death from enemy fire was a bit higher up on their 'what will kill me' priority list.
- phaus 6y agoIt was Kuwait so there was no enemy fire. Actually, for most of the conflicts in US history there were more casualties due to illnesses and other health issues than enemy fire. IIRC the Gulf War might have been the first time that wasn't the case. I just think heated plastics causing cancer was just something they hadn't caught up with.
- blaser-waffle 6y agoNapoleon was generally thought of as the first time were violent casualties exceeded non-violent ones. At least until his march to Russia. In the US the Civil War in the 1860s was when violent casualties tended to exceed medical ones. Even then, disease was a big deal, even up to WW2 where malaria was a huge problem in the Pacific Theater.