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Water From Wind
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Jan 30, 2007 01:42 PM
from the and-power-too dept.
from the and-power-too dept.
ghostcorps recommends a writeup in The Australian by columnist Phillip Adams about a new windmill design that extracts water from air. The article gives few details of how it works, because patent protection is not yet in place, but what is revealed sounds promising. "[Max] Whisson's design has many blades, each as aerodynamic as an aircraft wing, and each employing 'lift' to get the device spinning... They don't face into the wind like a conventional windmill; they're arranged vertically, within an elegant column, and take the wind from any direction... The secret of Max's design is how his windmills, whirring away in the merest hint of a wind, cool the air as it passes by... With three or four of Max's magical machines on hills at our farm we could fill the tanks and troughs, and weather the drought. One small Whisson windmill on the roof of a suburban house could keep your taps flowing. Biggies on office buildings, whoppers on skyscrapers, could give independence from the city's water supply. And plonk a few hundred in marginal outback land — specifically to water tree-lots — and you could start to improve local rainfall."
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Interested.... (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Does this design perform better than other windmill designs (for generation).
2. What will this do to the atmospheric conditions?
3. If everyone has one....will it no longer rain?
Layne
Re:Interested.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Layne
Parent
Re:Interested.... (Score:4, Interesting)
-matthew
Parent
Re:Interested.... (Score:5, Insightful)
IANAEE (I am not an electrical engineer) but if this thing can generate water, AND wind power...wouldn't it be a self-powered fuel cell? The process of separating the hydrogen could be powered by the wind-generated electricity it would seem. I'd love for someone with much more understanding of the physics behind this to tear apart my idea but this thing sounds damned useful. Not sure how small it could be made and still maintain its effectiveness but imagine giving a portable version of this to sailors. If you could create drinking water and electricity from this while floating on the ocean that would be a real life saver.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The energy efficiency of hydrogen fuel cells is roughly 50%. That means that if you put 100W into splitting the output water into hydrogen and oxygen, the resulting fuel cell would produce 50W. Seeing as generator efficiency can be as low as 80% due to heat losses, that means you would get about 40% of the wind energy in the form of electricity when you go to use the fuel cell.
Now, if you're talking a
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
oh wait...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:But why not? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Interested.... (Score:5, Informative)
1. Does this design perform better than other windmill designs (for generation).
No; conventional windmills have long been designed to extract the maximum amount of mechanical work from the air. This new windmill is not designed to do that, and works the same in any wind direction.
2. What will this do to the atmospheric conditions?
Small decrease in humidity.
3. If everyone has one....will it no longer rain?
It will still rain. The windmills couldn't possibly collect all evaporating air in a short radius. Even if they did, clouds call still blow in from over oceans and lakes.
Parent
Re:Interested.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Phillip Adams, this guy Max Whisson is your longtime friend. You give no details about how his device works, yet you ask for people to invest money with him. Is this a scam? You say you already have investors, yet you haven't managed to get a patent on this device yet, and so you need to keep the details secret. Why should we think this is anythign but a scam?
Parent
Re:Interested.... (Score:5, Funny)
So, what you're trying to say is:
[Morbo]
"Windmills do not work that way!"
[/Morbo]
Chris Mattern
Parent
Re:Interested.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Unfortunately we never got around to putting any form of electricity generation equipment or water/warmpumps rotor concept onto them as we planned (maelstroems/turbolence in the water to extract the potential energy)
- We have for years been putting off finishing the half built full size mill parked in the basement, maybe it's time to find the right bearings that can take the correct angle of pressure etc. and slam that hunk of junk together and start generating some $$$ from the savings as well as doing something right for the environment.
And the neat thing is that we have independent witnesses from several countries who can back us up regarding what we built and the principles involved so there will be no patent BS to stop us from doing whatever we'd like with our concept.
So No - I do not for one second believe this might be a scam, but I hope the guy simply decides to share his idea freely as his earnings will be far higher than mere money when the chips fall. Heck he could surely make quite some cash if he spoke to the right people - no need for patents - just get production started - If the concept is as revulutionizing as the article mentions then the need will far exceed production capabilities anyway - plenty to take from.
He could in life as well as later be remembered as a pioneer - And if the concept is realized as a stroke of genious - people might just listen to the next thing he might hatch.
Just my two cents...
Parent
Re:Interested.... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Easy to check for yourself. Unfortunately that does not give info on air-water systems, and there is no info in searching the Patent Applications yet.
If you want to get water out of air, you need to cool a surface to condense out water or reduce the air pressure to cause RH to go to 100% to condense out @ ambient temperature, or you can use hygroscopic materials to absorb water directly out of the air, but then you have to extract th
Are you thinking of Crimea? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Interested.... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Prove my speculation wrong, Adams and Whisson. Please, prove me wrong.
Re:Interested.... (Score:4, Informative)
TFA doesn't say, but there's a couple of ways it could be done. Just dropping air pressure would tend to cool the air somewhat, and that will happen on the leeward side of any airfoil moving through the atmosphere. When aircraft fly into icing conditions, the ice tends to collect on the upper surfaces of the wings where the air pressure is lower.
One other possibility is using a windmill to drive a Sterling-cycle engine. That will pump heat from one cylinder to the other, and water will condense on the cool side.
-jcr
Parent
Re:Interested.... (Score:4, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airfoil [wikipedia.org]
when air moves over something like an airfoil, a low pressure area is created.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideal_gas_law [wikipedia.org]
Generally, when you drop the pressure, the temperature will also drop. A drop in temperature will likely lead to condensation, which this device puports to gather.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The lowest humidity is:
http://www.weatherunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweat her/getForecast?query=New+Zealand [weatherunderground.com]
Observed at: Dunedin Aerodrome Aws, New Zealand
Elevation: 3 ft / 1 m
Temperature: 78 F / 26 C
Humidity: 28%
Dew Point: 51 F / 10 C
Wind: 17 mph / 28 km/h / from the North
Wind Gust: -
Pressure: 29.65 in / 1004 hPa (Falling)
And for good measure, their capital is:
http://www.weatherunderground.c [weatherunderground.com]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Dune (Score:5, Funny)
Next thing you know, we'll be harvesting spice.
Re:Dune (Score:4, Funny)
yeah, then we'll knock it up another notch, and give it a big blast from our spice weasel [geocities.com]! BAM!
Parent
Free Dry Land! (Score:5, Interesting)
Alright, sarcasm aside, surely there are bound to be some less-than-good effects on the surrounding enviroment if large amounts of water are 'sucked' out of the atmosphere prematurely?
Re:Free Dry Land! (Score:4, Interesting)
I can't see how a few hundred of these things, placed strategically would have any more of a negative impact than these factors. In fact, they could potentially be a sort of a civilization mitigator in a way. Someone please correct me if my thinking is wrong here.
Parent
Re:Free Dry Land! (Score:4, Interesting)
Here's why: Assume for the sake of argument that you can remove 20% of the water vapor over the 2-1/2 or so Meters above your house in a given day. And that all the houses in the big city do the same thing. Most of the water will go where? down the toilet or sink eventually, or perhaps be put into a garden, etc. where much of the moisture will re-evaporate. Now then, a reasonable assumption is that what goes down the toilet or sink gets put through the local sewage treatment plant or into a local septic field -- where, guess what -- it re-evaporates.
Secondarily, that 2-1-/2 meters of 20% more-dehumidified air is only maybe 1/100th of what is available under the weather, but even so, as the moisture re-distributes from the other 99%, assume it generates a little wind. Ultimately pulls say 1% more moist air in from the sea, soaks up some heat in the atmosphere, but if there is a constant drain that moisture will keep coming toward your city. Providing more wind energy to produce power and rain, etc. Not dry areas.
Let me know what you think.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What about simply supplying fresh cle
Hmmn, implied refrigeration (Score:5, Insightful)
Anything that creates lift creates a lower pressure, which in turn refrigerates, and eventually induces condensation.
A Mere Matter of Programming to model an aerodynamic shape that maximizes condensation and captures the resulting droplets.
--dave
Wow. (Score:3, Interesting)
Calling Uncle Owen and Luke Skywalker (Score:4, Funny)
it's a competition (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, but you know Schick is just going to add one more blade and totally steal his marketshare.
Bad idea (Score:3, Interesting)
One small Whisson windmill on the roof of a suburban house could keep your taps flowing. Biggies on office buildings, whoppers on skyscrapers, could give independence from the city's water supply.
And enough of them and the humidity of the air will drop, reducing all of these miracle machines to a trickle. Probably not good for the local plant and wildlife, too. Rain is important.
It doesn't have to be zero sum (Score:3, Informative)
sum zero gain (Score:3, Interesting)
and if the water content of oceans diminishes, the salt content increases proportionately. that would threaten to bring dramatic change to the fragile balance of the environment for marine life.
when man plays with mother nature, we almost inevitably come out on the losing end.
* drain the swamps in new orleans, then lose 60% of the land's ability to absorb water.
* introduce pest-killing amphibians to the everglades, then they procreate without preditors and wipe out existing species.
* water the deserts of nevada to make lush golf courses, then people in colorado go thirsty and firemen can't put out historically large forest fires covering hundreds of thousands of acres.
Re:sum zero gain (Score:4, Informative)
Umm, any water collected by these things would end up either: (a) re-evaporating locally or (b) running into a river. In the first case, there's no net change in water distribution. In the second case, the fresh water ultimately ends up in an ocean, restoring the salinity levels.
At any rate, we've been mining huge amounts of water out of ancient aquifers for decades without worrying about ocean salinity. But that is still an insignificant drop in the bucket compared to the real impact on salinity: the massive influx of fresh water that is currently coming from from melting polar ice.
Parent
"the water content of oceans diminishes" (Score:4, Informative)
http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/waterdistribution.ht
The oceans contain 96.5% of the water on the Earth. The soil moisture, which is what we would like to increase, contains 0.001% of the water. Even if you doubled the soil moisture with this technique, the the oceans would still contain 96.5% of the water. The change is simply too small to register on the same scale. So don't worry about the salt balance of the oceans.
Almost all the moisture taken from the atmosphere would btw end right back in the atmosphere again, as evapotranspiration. But in the process, it would allow plants to grow.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
water will be replenished into the air from the oceans. how do we know this? how was this proven?
Air can only hold a certain amount of water, known as the saturation point. Saturation is the reason water stops evaporating, not the speed of the evaporation process. That is to say, if the air is drier, evaporation will easily keep up to bring it back to the saturation point. The humidity will be replenished, unless the sun stops shining.
if the water content of oceans di
Where's the need come from? (Score:5, Funny)
Forgive me for being unaware of this impending catatrophe, but is there really an urgent issue? Is this mainly happening in Australia? I thought floods were going to be the next big problem, due to global warming.
What should I be bracing myself for? Floods or droughts? I need to know what I should panic about. Thanks.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Depends on the desert. Some exist where mankind imported goats, which ate all of the vegetation down to nothing. The first usually has drought-resistant plants still around, like cactus and the like, and shouldn't be messed with. The second, like what exists in Australia, Northern Africa, and the Middle East, usually has no vegetation to speak of and high humidity. These deserts can be reh
Stop smoking crack naysayers (Score:5, Insightful)
vaporware (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Something doesn't add up... (Score:5, Interesting)
No, it's more that this windmill does what trees in a rainforest are already doing. Israel noticed this some time ago, and spent most of the 1960s and 1970s on something similar, though theirs was based on water pumped out of salinated lakes and the Medditeranian, and placed in desalination tanks. The fresh water was used for tree farms, that created more rainfall by cooling the air.
Therefore, the windmill in this situation is just a placeholder for what the trees will do anyway once they're mature enough.
Parent
Re:Something doesn't add up... (Score:4, Informative)
Even more incidentally, one reason there were so few trees in the first place is that the Ottomans imposed a tax on having a tree on one's property at some point.
Monarchies have the silliest taxes....
Parent
Re:Something doesn't add up... (Score:4, Insightful)
Trees improve local rainfall, because they affect weather (slow it down, for one thing.)
Deforestation has had horrendous effects on global weather. You might have noticed that the Amazon is drying up...
Parent
Re:Hand out the Moisturizer (Score:5, Funny)
We have a widespread system of asphalt-covered concrete which collect the copious moisture, extracted from the nearby lake due to atmospheric pressure differentials, in the form of a thick residue. We then dissolve large amounts of highly soluble compounds into this residue to prevent it from freezing solid, and then the mixture is processed by repeatedly compressing it under several hundred pounds of weight.
We use the resulting product to support both the automobile and landscaping industries, by using it to rust out car underbodies and kill treelawn grass.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If you have enough room you can use solar distillers to purify the water. The water goes through a bend with a pinhole in the top and VOCs are removed, and everything else is left behind.
If not, you can use a particulate filter, a carbon filter, and then a reverse osmosis filter, but this requires using a pump t