Creating Water from Thin Air 348
Iphtashu Fitz writes "In order to provide the U.S. Military with water in places like Iraq, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency gave millions of dollars in research funding to companies like LexCarb and Sciperio to try to extract water from the air. Amazingly, a company that DARPA didn't fund, Aqua Sciences, beat them all to the punch by developing a machine that can extract up to 600 gallons of water a day from thin air even in locations like arid deserts. The 20 foot machine does this without using or producing toxic materials or byproducts. The CEO of Aqua Sciences declined to elaborate on how the machine works, but said it is based on the natural process by which salt absorbs water."
They did this in ancient times in the middle east (Score:5, Informative)
Linky link (Score:5, Informative)
George.. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:They did this in ancient times in the middle ea (Score:2, Informative)
So in all they probably just found, or dynamically adjust, the 'sweet spot' between the two methods to produce the mo
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Of course, having physical explanations kinda takes some of the magic out.
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"In my day, we not only had to walk uphill both ways to school, we had to part the seas to do it!"
"You parted the seas?! Lucky bastard! We had to hold breath and walk along the bottom..."
"Oh yes. Well, at least you were walking. We had to outrun the whole Egyptian army.. And wander in the desert for forty days."
"Days? We had to wander for forty weeks!"
"Well I say days, it was re
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Yeah, that's why it's more likely to be the result of "wind setdown" and the resulting bore when the wind failed. The water being pushed back to expose a path would have been a reasonably common event. If you were a local, you'd know it would be a dangerous path to use, but if you were desperate to escape it might have seemed worth the risk
We already have one of these... (Score:5, Funny)
Sincerely,
Muad'Dib
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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Because the Fremen had enough trouble just bribing the Spacing Guild to keep them from putting up weather/surveillance satellites that would expose their way of life and their actual numbers? And of course killing of the sandworms in a short time would have killed off most of the Fremen as wel
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-Peter
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Check the masthead - we were ALL thinking of Dune.
I wonder why Herbert never thought of having some Fremen just crash a few comets into the planet
Because the Guild Navigators wouldn't let them; they were powerful enough to keep the Emperor from having weather satellites.
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Re:Frank Herbert was prescient (Score:4, Funny)
That's one thing I would not want to beta test.
Just make sure that the processing parts of it still work when you're walking without rhythm.
Did anyone else think of... (Score:2)
Someone contact the Fremen (Score:4, Funny)
Windtraps (Score:2)
However the article itself was about as descriptive of technology as Frank Herbert's novels. Here is a fun quote.
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That part puzzled the hell out of me. Surely they have it patented? If so, the plans are on file and public.
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But the secret isn't a big deal. According to William Poundstone's analysis, their "seven secret herb and spices" are (1) salt (2) pepper. Which isn't entirely surprising: KFC chicken doesn't taste particularly spicy or herbaceous. You really don't need anything else for good fried chicken; it's more about technique than ingredients (a though buttermilk marinade doesn't hurt,
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The company site is short on content and as useless as the article. Blue ISO containers, meh.
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From KFC.com:
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It should work... (Score:5, Funny)
If that happens its going to take a long time before Louis shows up.
I wonder... (Score:2)
I guess the telling would be to see how may gallons of water it can produce while floating on a fresh water lake, and on teh salty sea.
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Well, I might be able to get close to that. Drop the one foot cube part. :)
Start out with your choice of cooling mechanisms---Peltier junctions or compressors or whatever. Cool a large plate down to near freezing. To reduce the power consumption, place it at moderately high altitude so that air temperatures are naturally cooler. At the bottom of this device, place a pipe to catch the runoff. At the bottom of the pipe (several hundred feet below), place a turbine.
This requires initial power to coo
Invented a long time ago, in a galaxy far away... (Score:5, Funny)
I thought so.
(sorry, it was just too obivious)
Re:Invented a long time ago, in a galaxy far away. (Score:2)
http://www.pilvikaupunki.net/galleria/albums/user
Re:Invented a long time ago, in a galaxy far away. (Score:3, Funny)
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Dumb soldier: "These aren't the vaporators we're lookong for. Move along."
Re:Lucas - king of the rip-offs (Score:4, Insightful)
Not to say that science fiction (and other) writers don't rip off too, but they're usually much better at filing off the serial numbers, and taking from totally different genres (as well as being long since in the public domain). Asimov's inspiration for the Foundation Trilogy (back when it was a trilogy) was, loosely speaking, "The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire". Forbidden Planet was loosely based on Shakespeare's "The Tempest" (and of course Star Trek ripped off a lot from Forbidden Planet). And so on.
(In fact Hollywood is often closer to the original when they rip something off than they are when they buy the property and make a movie from it. Joke. Joke.)
Why the surprise? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Historically the government has been a great catalyst of techology inovation and improvements.
Considering that this company that has allegedly done this claims no byproducts and won't let anyone know how they did it.
color me Sceptical.
Today's Irony Moment (Score:5, Insightful)
See also the Internet you're using to post your comment. Oh wait, DARPA created that, nevermind.
Good! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Good! (Score:5, Funny)
I thought Vaporware was the desired result here, no?
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Water is great (Score:4, Funny)
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I called Jesus, he said that he can do water into wine... will that do?
Re:Water is great (Score:5, Funny)
Dune comes to life... (Score:2)
Fear is the mind killer...
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You won't be so chipper when you are drinking your recycled urine and feces through a straw in 2026.
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hm (Score:5, Informative)
Re:hm (Score:4, Funny)
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Seems to me, the key word would be SUSTAINABLE- a solar powered refridgeration radiator would be more sustainable.
Re:hm (Score:5, Informative)
A related word, deliquescent, refers to substances so hygroscopic they will dissolve themselves using water absorbed from the air.
Lithium [Chloride|Bromide], probably (Score:3, Interesting)
It sucks the moisture out of the air, then you heat it up and evaporate the water, leaving the salts behind to be reused.
The great thing about is, all you need is a heat source. You can either burn fuel, or use waste heat coming off a turbine, or even use solar energy -- you need temperatures above boiling, but not too much higher.
This is the same stuff they use for solar-powered heat pumps, except there they use a closed loop system, and evaporate the water at low pressure to get air conditioning.
Re:hm (Score:5, Informative)
Most likely it's a system where prilled or powdered salt is tumbled through dry air to absorb moisture; it's then roasted to release the moisture, captured under reduced pressure to reduce the amount of energy required, and returned to its anhydrous state. It'll be clumpy and chunky, so it'll have to be re-ground into a fine powder before reuse.
The $.30 a gallon is probably largely from the amount required in the removal of the water from the hydrate; distillation of water runs ~$.25 a gallon (assuming no recycling of the waste heat from condensation to pre-heat water going into the boiler) at $.10/kwh. Using gasoline or diesel would be considerably more expensive- thus the reduced pressure.
Distilled water from air- not too shabby. I've thought about trying the same here in the desert (where it's routinely ~10% RH in Phoenix), but it's just not worth it.
Uncle Owen! (Score:5, Funny)
Correction (Score:2)
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Just add water! (Score:5, Funny)
--Q
And remember kids... (Score:2)
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Pretty much, since you pretty much put it right back in. That's why you need so much of it in the desert. And why there's so little eco system there to damage.
How much water gets used up when you flush a toilet? That's right. None. There's no water shortage, it's a question of purity and distribution, not quantity.
KFG
Re:And remember kids... (Score:5, Informative)
This is actually much better than trucking in water from afar or pulling it out of deep wells. In that case, you are altering the environment. Water not previously in the environment is being added.
The world needs fresh water. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's good that our soldiers are out in the middle east doing their jobs, and they deserve fresh water too. But seeing the general anger towards the US that's prevelant in so much of the world right now, actually helping people with something like this would generate tremendous good will. It'd probably be a lot cheaper than our wars are as well.
Re:The world needs fresh water. (Score:4, Insightful)
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If an ideological opponent gave ME free stuff in hope that I could be bribed, I'd thank the nice man and then use it against him.
If someone to whom I was indifferent gave me free stuff, I would thank the nice man and then question their motive.
Re:The world needs fresh water. (Score:4, Insightful)
Dehydrated water... (Score:2)
Finally... (Score:5, Funny)
Reusable Jokes (Score:2, Insightful)
Stillsuit (Score:2)
By the way, download the full game with speech (legal abandonware) at http://www.the-underdogs.info/game.php?gameid=345 [the-underdogs.info]
not surprising (Score:2, Informative)
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I can't believe no one (Score:2)
Some points to consider... (Score:2, Interesting)
Serious questions ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet further down
Anybody with half a brain knows that there has to be some humidity in the air in order to extract water. Wait, that explains it.
While it is an accomplishment to reduce the humidity requirement, it doe not eliminate it. Indeed given their claim of up to 600 gal/day I'd say that at the minimum required humidity of 14%, it is possible that they may require far more of them than is talked about. A key factor is how rapidly that output drops when the humidity levels drop. if it porduces 600 gal/day at optimum humidity levels, it may only put out say 10 gal/day. If that were the case you could not rely on this for troop support in such areas. A supplemental, sure.
Depending on the size and maintenance requirements, as well as the phsyical inputs other than air, it may not be cost effective to use these in more arid regions. Now, places like the southern US they would be quite useful.
What I'd like to know is the size and power requirements. Something like this could be quite useful in high-rise buildings. Pumping water to the upper levels requires a significant amount of power. If instead we could put a few of these on tops of buildings and use them to bring water down, we might see a net win in terms of supply and energy usage. Imagine places like Phoenix or Las Vegas.
Pheonix has an average daily humidity of about 55% IIRC. Thus it would stand to reason that these units could pump out their maximum output. Depending on their size and power requirements, several of these atop an office building in Phoenix could produce several thousand gallons per building. As office buildings their water requirements might be low enough to satisfy with these units. They would have the further advantage of dehumidifying the hot air of Phoenix, thus possibly resulting in a slight cooling load reduction.
Even small residential units could be tremendously benefited. The average person requires 125 gal/day. Thus one of these could supply the water needs (not counting grass lawns) of a family of four in Phoenix. If the house is designed with greywater and systems for landscaping purposes it is possible that one of these could fully supply the average water requirement of a family of four in Phoenix. Which leads to the question
Anyone from Phoneix care to share how much you pay for water? If you've got a spouse and a pair of kids, and this unit eliminated your water usage bill (there would still be sewage), how much would it save you per year?
40,000 of these units in Phoenix would drop the summer daily demand for water by 24Mgal/day, or 5-12% depending on the season (Summer to Winter).
Essentially, if this proved cost effective then the more arid parts of the country might be able to make large savings on their infrastructure and supply costs. Which would be yet another miltary requested technology applied to positive civilian use.
The next question is: does it scale up and down? Can it be scaled down to be an effective one-person supply? Do larger units demonstrate a better-than-linear increase in water production?
Combine this with greywater systems, solar thermal heating (water and home), and appropriate landscaping and we would be a long ways toward a more sustainable system - without major changes and reductions to our standard of living.
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like not as much humidity, not like no humidity.
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You don't RC, it's more like 3%. Its 20% right now [weather.com] and they're predicting rain, which they usually don't get a whole lot of.
The humidity is so low they don't use standard air conditioners there; they have "swamp coolers" which work by evaporating a stream of water. Very cheap and efficient where there's practically no humidity at all. At 50% humidity one wouldn't work.
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http://www.aquasciences.com/ [aquasciences.com]
Apparently they have container models that can produce 1200 gal/day. 20'x8'x8'. So a couple of these on office buildings would do niceley.
They seem a bit on the large side for single-family home use. Bummer. Perhaps that would improve. These seem to have a built-in generator. If attached to grid I wonder how much smaller these would be. Perhaps multi-family structures could work out wel
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What?? Here in the Netherlands, which does not exactly have a water shortage, the water consumption for residential use is about 125 liters per day per person.[1] [minvrom.nl] That is about 4 times less! What do you do with all that water?
Diesel? (Score:2)
Machines may be powered by electricity or a self-contained diesel generator and are environmentally friendly due to lower energy requirements and no harmful or toxic by-products.
So it's not, in fact, "no by products", it's "low by products". Although how Diesel emissions can be considered non-toxic is beyond me.
Iraq needs water? (Score:2)
If the damn fools would stop blowing up their own water and power plants, they'd have plenty of water.
Air conditioners? (Score:2)
So does my AC. Not 300 gallons though, but if it were 20 feet long and used a few hundred lilowatts it might.
Several systems on the market can create water through condensation, but the process requires a high level of humidity.
Or a high level of wattage? TFA is completely absent on details about how it works.
I know a SERE instructor... (Score:5, Informative)
1) Water from plants is always drinkable. I'm talking about water from the root system, not some stagnant water you could slurp out of a recess between branches. The easiest way is to take a large trash bag, grab a cluster of branches and put the bag around them (make sure the open end of the trash bag is tightly sealed to prevent air from going into the enclosed bunch). It forces the tree to "sweat" water from its root system. After about 24 hours you can slit the bottom of the bag and drain it into a nalgene bottle. You can only do one group of branches per 24 hour period, so you need to use different trees to gather water. I tried it out when I was in Eastern Oregon (which, for all intents and purposes, is an inland desert) and averaged about 1 liter of water per 24 hours. I had 6 trash bags that I normally have in my hiking ruck, so I could feasibly harvest 6 liters per day if I was SOL somewhere.
2) A cluster of birch trees usually means there's water underground.
3) Any multi-celled berry (ie: raspberry) is edible.
Anyway, I thought it was pretty cool shit, and informative. :)
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A little while back I asked an Australian friend of mine about the 'Crocodile Hunter'. He told me that he was unheard of in Australia and he was just some Australian stereotype promulgated by American TV. But when Irwin died I read comments like that of the Australian Prime Minister saying that he represented the real Australia. So now I assume that
Solar Still (Score:5, Informative)
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This got me thinking though, what is the effect going to be if this sort of thing is deployed in a really large scale? Does it reduce the moisture content of the
Can I get a shoutout from all the foodies? (Score:5, Interesting)
All the Alton Brown [altonbrown.com] geeks in the house should have perked up their ears when they read that. Salt is hydroscopic [wikipedia.org]; it attracts water. Sugar is also hydroscopic, but salt is much cheaper (especially if you don't need food-grade salt).
There are two ways salt is harvested by humans: evaporation and mining.
I can see using salt to grab the moisture in the air present in the pre-dawn skies, but I don't rightly know how to make the salt give it back up. I assume they just cook the rocks and capture the steam. Salt, being a rock, can be heated lots of times before degrading.
I imagine a process like this would produce fairly clean water.
Give up for Food Science! Hell ya!
Old technology (Score:4, Funny)
One of the problems which has dogged airships from day 1 is the inability to replace the weight of burned fuel. There's a couple ways you can deal with this problem, but none of them are ideal. Modern blimps and airships are actually heavier than air, relying on lift from engine pods to get the airship in the air. As they burn fuel they get lighter, but they're never actually "lighter than air". Early airships were much too large for this strategy especially since engine technology was far less advanced.
The most successful airship in history, the Graf Zeppelin, used a gas called Blau Gas to power its engines. Blau Gas is just a mixture of propane and hydrogen that weighs the same as air, so when you burn it and the gas volume is replaced by air of the same weight you don't have any buoyancy problems. Graf Zeppelin used hydrogen, which is relatively cheap, for its lifting gas. If it became too light they could vent enough hydrogen to restore neutral buoyancy.
But this scheme wasn't very efficient, from an engineering perspective. Every cubic meter of fuel was a cubic meter that couldn't be used for lift. Also, as they designed the Hindenburg they were concerned about safety, so they decided the Hindenburg would be filled with helium instead of hydrogen. Since heliem is about 10% less efficient as a lifting gas, Zeppelin engineers decided they just couldn't live with Blau Gas. Also, Blau Gas has the same safety drawbacks as hydrogen. Helium is much more expensive than hydrogen, so if the company was to be profitable there was no way they could just vent helium when the ship was too light. So if they were to use diesel fuel exclusively in the Hindenburg, they needed a way to add weight to the airship in flight.
The solution was to remove water from the air and use it as ballast to replace the now-missing diesel fuel. The system they designed used a silica gel, the same stuff that comes in a little packet labeled "DO NOT EAT" when you buy a pair of shoes. Ambient air was blown over the gel, which is highly water absorbent. The gel was then heated using waste engine heat to produce water vapor, which was collected in a condenser. Eventually they decided to use the diesel exhaust (which is apparently very humid) instead of ambient air. This was 70 years ago.
Daedalus of New Scientist got there first. (Score:3, Informative)
Anyway, it includes a column dated May 25, 1978 entitled "The Desert Waterer" in which "Daedalus" proposes just such a device, whereby moisture is collected from the air by means of a hygroscopic liquid. The water can then be extruded through a semi-permeable membrane if the liquid is under sufficient pressure. This can be accomplished simply by placing the liquid in a tall column; moisture enters at the top and the hydrostatic pressure at the bottom allows recovery. Daedalus then considers some convenient liquids for the purpose. Sulfuric acid is readily available in industrial quantities but would need a column 2400 meters high, which is somewhat awkward. Invert sugar syrup has a higher molecular weight and would require a column merely 720 meters high, as well as being nontoxic, and even edible in case of an emergency. Best of all, he says, is a product called "Carbowax", for which a column of only 50 meters would suffice.
The firm in charge of this present project has a suspiciously similar name, so perhaps they have just created a better Carbowax.
Daedalus, in the book, cites a number of cases where an invention from the column has become the subject of serious research. So this is just one more example...
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You could distribute it to villages with bad water sources.
In fact... this thing could be a pretty big deal if it's cheap enough to produce.
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I have to think at some point, dehydrating the air in an already arid region is going to have negative effects on the local climate. Maybe not so bad if you are temporarily supporting a mobile, transient military force, but if you start relying on them to support stationary civilian populations, it could be o
Re:I have one of these in my car... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Not having read the article... (Score:4, Informative)
1: Water does have a shelf life, which is why if you're storing it for long periods you have to add stabilizers.
2: The bottles can leach into the water over time, and some plastic bottles are set up so that they will begin to bio-degrade in a couple years, hence the date stamped on each bottle when you buy them.
Re:don't even think about using this crap in afric (Score:2)
It's a good stratagy.
Assuming this magic device works.