Water From Wind 411
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."
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.
It doesn't have to be zero sum (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Interested.... (Score:2, Informative)
I believe that it's works based off of the ideal gas law, more more specifically, Gay-Lussac's law [wikipedia.org]. The blades reduce the air pressure in close vicinity, causing a drop in temperature. Colder air can't hold as much moisture so some of it condenses out as water.
What gets me is that this machine will have to work really hard in drier climates to extract water, as you essentially need to lower air to its dewpoint temperature to get water to condense out. In a desert, the dewpoint can be as low as 35F on a 100F degree day. This means that you need to lower the air in the column to below 35F to get any results. Fortunately, most places aren't always that bad when it comes to a "dry heat". Since it's powered by the wind, you really can't claim it as being energy hungry, just maybe not effective enough to necessarily meet demand.
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....
"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.
Re:Interested.... (Score:3, Informative)
Details on Product are Available (Score:2, Informative)
Re:sum zero gain (Score:2, Informative)
A long while ago the Netherlands was just plain land and a few bits of dredged up water that now are also called land (and that annoy the **** out of us in most things - whaddayamean, I can't be at -20 feet in my car?). They then dredged up the Noordoostpolder without keeping a water bit between it and the "mainland". The country on the previously shore dried out and the farmers complained. They then dredged up Flevoland and did include the water barrier (look at the map - it's the big "island" in the middle). This worked.
Just look at what you're doing wrong and don't do it wrong next time. Although, given the examples, you could also say that when Americans make a failure, they make one hell of a large failure.
wind, yes. mill, no. (Score:1, Informative)
Does it matter? Yes. Being smart, not stupid, matters. You're meant to be nerds. Get it right.
Re:Interested.... (Score:2, Informative)
Patent lodged (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Interested.... (Score:3, Informative)
The lowest humidity is:
http://www.weatherunderground.com/cgi-bin/findwea
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.com/cgi-bin/findwea
[Partly Cloudy]
68 F / 20 C Partly Cloudy
Humidity: 56%
Dew Point: 52 F / 11 C
Wind: 29 mph / 46 km/h / 12.9 m/s from the North
Wind Gust: 44 mph / 70 km/h / 19.5 m/s
Pressure: 30.01 in / 1016 hPa