Water Bottle Fills Itself From the Air 173
Posted
by
samzenpus
from the everything-is-wet dept.
from the everything-is-wet dept.
mbstone writes "The Namib Desert Beetle generates water from water vapor via its shell, which has alternating hydrophilic and hydrophobic bumps which channel water droplets into its mouth. Scientists at MIT developed a self-filling water bottle using this technology, and have announced a contest for the best design of a countertop water-from-air generator."
thinking ahead (Score:1)
stuff like this we're gonna need to stave off the water riots coming to a decade near you.
Did not RTFA (Score:2)
Did it look like this could be inexpensively produced? Changing weather patterns threaten some watersheds; Install at some Headwaters, to soften the ecologic collapse.
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Now I just need my city to install some.... :(
Hydrophobic? (Score:3, Funny)
I'm not hydrophobic, I have gay friends!
Re:Hydrophobic? (Score:5, Funny)
I'm not hydrophobic, I have gay friends!
I'm not hydrophobic, some of my best friends are wet.
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Some of my best friends are wetbacks!
Re:Hydrophobic? (Score:5, Funny)
I'm just so thankful that god sent us this invention!
Re:Hydrophobic? (Score:5, Insightful)
I’m not a scientist, man. I can tell you what recorded history says, I can tell you what the Bible says, but I think that’s a dispute amongst theologians and I think it has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States.
Him, you and all the people like you couldn't be more wrong. Science and mathematics has everything to do with the economic growth of the United States. How can the U.S. compete in biotechnology if what we learn in biology courses is that god created the beetle? How can we compete in oil production if all we learn is that fossils are there to fool the unbelievers and the earth is 6000 years old? Time and evolution created both: 4.54 billion years is a LONG time, animal species can change a lot over that amount of time.
Frankly, I think you people are all nuts, and I'd happily let you live in your bubble if not for the fact that you all are ruining my country. I think it's a real shame that our education system has failed so miserably to produce roughly 48% of the voting population who can't even do basic arithmetic (i.e., go read Ryan's or Romney's economic plans: they either don't add up or impossibly vague). This has nothing to with Democrat or Republican, you could have figure out who was the right person to vote for just by looking at which one could do basic arithmetic. This election, my vote went for logic and reason, and that fortunately prevailed, but only by 3.3% or so.
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Alas, it appears that your distaste for Mr Rubio's politics has blinded your ability to read. He's certainly not saying that science has nothing to do with the GDP or economy. That's a parenthetical statement in which it is quite clear that he's using the
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government should force one person to shove their religion out of the way so that they can be compelled by the Federal government to pay for another persons pills and abortions.
Government should force one person to shove their beliefs out of the way so that they can be compelled by the Federal government to pay for another person's wars, assassinations, support of brutal dictatorships in foreign countries, farming subsidies, etc. Government should never take money from one person to pay some other person's business loans, blood money, hit fees, etc.
In other words, get the fuck over yourself you whiny little shit. The federal government does lots of things lots of us don't like,
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I think it's a real shame that our education system has failed so miserably to produce roughly 48% of the voting population who can't even do basic arithmetic
Are those the same people that think that everyone else should pay their bill "Because"?
Are those the same people that California is begging to get food stamps?
Are these the people create by Teachers Unions?
Math. Try it.
See what happens here in California. It will be what happens to the country as a whole soon.
Over 200,000 people who pay taxes every year move out of California for states that respect their tax payers.
What comes in are the net tax takers. We will just keep increasing taxes on those that pay
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Him, you and all the people like you couldn't be more wrong. Science and mathematics has everything to do with the economic growth of the United States. How can the U.S. compete in biotechnology if what we learn in biology courses is that god created the beetle? How can we compete in oil production if all we learn is that fossils are there to fool the unbelievers and the earth is 6000 years old? Time and evolution created both: 4.54 billion years is a LONG time, animal species can change a lot over that amount of time.
I'm not even religious, but I'm pretty sure this post is trolling (if not 'just' idiotic).
Somehow religious people who buy into creationism are incapable of science and technology? What is the line of thinking.. "God created this creature, so I can't *possibly* bring myself to study how it works and duplicate it's function in novel technologies for mankind's use!" ?
Is the 11th commandment something like "You shall not look too closely at my other creations," or "You shall respect the privacy of all other c
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I have a degree in computer science with a minor in mathematics. I've spent the past 8 years out of college writing software that does billions of dollars in transactions.
Do you have a ten-inch penis too?
I voted R/R. Yet, I must be one of the ignorant masses, since you understand everything.
Hey, if it walks like a duck...
Point being, your fancy schmancy degree is worth the paper it's printed on, but has nothing to do with whether or not you're an ignorant fool. Waving it around as evidence that you're not is an appeal to authority at best ("The people I paid tens of thousands of dollars to say so say I'm not an idiot! SEE!"), and at worst is a total non-sequitur (lots of morons get degrees and live very successful lives, but they're still morons). Either way,
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70% of my friends are water! (Score:2, Funny)
70% of my friends are water!
3L per square meter per hour @ 75 percent humidity (Score:5, Funny)
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Do the math... That's like 100mL per hour for a water bottle size. That's actually pretty impressive!
Re:3L per square meter per hour @ 75 percent humid (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:3L per square meter per hour @ 75 percent humid (Score:4, Insightful)
OTOH, my roof could easily collect more water than I use in a day.
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Yes, as long as it's an area that gets the morning fog (see the 75% humidity in the subject).
Re:3L per square meter per hour @ 75 percent humid (Score:4, Informative)
Your math is off. I don't have a 710ml bottle handy, so I did a 12oz can.
Assuming 6.5cm * 12cm, ignoring the bottom and top surfaces, just the sides of the cylinder, I get 490 cm2, which is .049 m2.
3l * .049 = 0.147; 147ml/h. The can will be a 40% full in an hour, in 75% RH.
I assume the performance in drier conditions is much worse, though.
Although, once the liquid is in the container, it loses surface area? I didnt bother reading to find out whether the inside or outside or both count. math was assuming one side.. If it is the inside surface that does the work, the increasingly covered surface will give reduced efficiency as it approaches full...
Re:3L per square meter per hour @ 75 percent humid (Score:5, Informative)
shit, 2pi r h, not 2 pi d h.
so it should be 244cm2, .024m2, producing 73ml/h. Still respectable.
Re:3L per square meter per hour @ 75 percent humid (Score:5, Interesting)
My point is that a temperature gradient is far cheaper and available to poor third world desert countries where such a system is required. This technology is neat but not all that practical. Still a combination of the two systems, ie. lining the inside of underground pipes with this substance and letting the wind push air through might have a much higher rate of condensation and could be used for commercial and military operations in the desert.
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The maths I have says a 710 ml coke bottle should be (we don't have them here, so I'm estimating), about 7cm across and 20cm tall. That would make it's surface area roughly 439 square cm. So you would get 3L * 0.439 = 1.3 litres per hour out of that... It can fill itself in half an hour at 75% humidity. Pretty bloody impressive.
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Uhh, I missed a 0 in the conversion to m square... still, 0.13 litres per hour. It'll take about 5 hours to fill, which is pretty good – it means a marathon runner carrying a 710ml bottle will actually have a litre to drink in the race.
Re:3L per square meter per hour @ 75 percent humid (Score:5, Insightful)
And now imagine instead of being a bottle, it's a dense matrix made to maximize surface area and fresh air is pushed through with a solar-powered fan to accelerate the "condensation." Sort of like an evaporative cooling chiller in reverse. It could be really useful in humid tropical areas and a good alternative to desalination plants.
Re:3L per square meter per hour @ 75 percent humid (Score:5, Funny)
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50% or 50% empty is a misnomer. Let an engineer look at it, and he'll show you an over-engineered bottle!
I am an engineer and I say that it depends on the direction. While filling up the bottle is half full, while drinking it is half empty.
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Not necessarily. You could be drinking it and say it's *still* half full.
Likewise when filling, you could say it's *still* half empty.
So still reverses polarity, or something?
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Dilute vodka with 50% water???
In Soviet Russia, vodka dilutes YOU.
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the spice must flow (Score:2, Funny)
NBD Nano co-founder Deckard Sorensen wants this green technology available in all walks of life; installing it on people, cars, homes and anything else you can imagine.
Next stop stillsuits.
Windtrap (Score:1)
The correct Dune reference is, of course, the windtrap [wikia.com].
The bottle requires power ... (Score:4, Informative)
Windtraps could also work using condensation techniques like refrigeration, or a regenerative moisture absorber. Of course, those techniques require power.
So does this device. From the article: "The self-filling bottle can operate using a battery or solar cell to collect and filter the water."
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The power is to blow wind over the surface. So a windtrap doesn't need the battery.
Of course, a windtrap could have a wind-powered generator for running it's refrigeration coils. It seems that this is unnecessary with this stuff - the beetle gets by just with radiative cooling - but probably improves the efficiency of the collector surface for it to be cool.
Re:Sweat (Score:2)
The material wicks sweat into tubes with one way valves. Normal walking motion compresses the tubes causing the system to act as a pump.
I use that function of my exocrine system for thermal diffusion, I believe the system you describe might require some magical properties in order to work
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I think the idea is you use prevailing winds to cause the air to circulate, hence the name. Clearly you could also use solar cells, but those would have been observable. Windtraps were basically holes through a hill fairly near the top, that didn't run straight through, and that condensed water from the cooled air near the center of the tunnel. And they had to be unobtrusive, because the Fremen were being hunted by the Harkonnens. So avoid using power, because that's detectable.
Star Wars (Score:5, Insightful)
Now we know what Luke Skywalker was repairing.
Water Vaporware (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds like vaporware to me.
Milsleading title (surprise!) (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Milsleading title (surprise!) (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Milsleading title (surprise!) (Score:5, Funny)
We already have this in Ireland. All you need is a funnel. Doesn't need any special properties.
think of the possibilities (Score:1)
Air Water Machine (Score:2, Informative)
Wasting my breath I know...
but machines which extract water from air have been around for a long time.
Even a humble air-conditioner does this (albeit rather inefficiently)
Google on "Air Water Machine"
Re:Air Water Machine (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Air Water Machine (Score:4, Informative)
The air/water machine extracts water vapour via thermal methods (eg condensation).
There are of course other ways of collecting water if it is in droplet form (eg mist)
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fog_collection [wikipedia.org] or google on "fog fence"
This latter method seems to be pretty much what the beetles are doing
Re:Air Water Machine (Score:5, Insightful)
This is much more efficient than the fog net, principally because the arrangement of materials means that your collection surface is fouled with water less - the droplets roll straight off the hydrophobic surface, leaving the hydrophilic surface available to attract another droplet.
The same physical process is involved regardless of which air/water collection machine you use - it's all applied thermodynamics.
Like another poster said, it's like the difference between relays and transistors - they both perform the same job (being a switch) but one is a much smarter use of material science and much more efficient.
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Like another poster said, it's like the difference between relays and transistors - they both perform the same job (being a switch) but one is a much smarter use of material science and much more efficient.
Actually, relays are slower but more efficient than transistors, or triacs or tiristors or any other semiconductor switch. That's because the driven circuit sees no voltage drop - the relay closes a mechanical switch, there is no voltage drop and hence practically no power dissipation. Semiconductors, on the other hand, always have a certain voltage drop, small as it may be, and need to be cooled.
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Of course, there are also dehumidifiers around. They're being sold where I live big time - especially in summer where you have those 100% humidity weeks (one time we had laundry hanging out for three days, it was 28-30C during the day, but after three days it was still not dry and we took it to the laundry shop to have it tumble dried! That's how bad it can get!). One objection I have is that those things use quite some electricity, or chemicals to attract water and that have to be replaced all the time.
Thi
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This sounds like a solution that does not need any external power input
That is only true for a moving object, a runner, vehicle, boat, etc. For stationary objects a fan is needed for air flow, the article mentions solar or battery. I suppose a good wind might work too but that limits where and when you can collect water.
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One could maybe use a chimney, heated by the sun, to draw the air through the system. Though technically that's also an external power input of course, even though it doesn't need moving parts.
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One other issue, which I think is kind of relevant: You generally wouldn't want to drink water from a dehumidifier. I've heard that some earlier water-from-air attempts stranded on this: they make water all right, but brackish, disgusting water.
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Water dripping from an airco unit should be safe to drink, that's pure condensation water. Could be as pure as distilled water - depending on how clean the air around it is.
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It used to be pure condensation water, then it dripped into an AC unit that is neither designed for hygiene or has ever been cleaned. The water is certainly distilled, but on no account safe to drink.
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About 5 months ago I bought a new dehumidifier. I used it for about a week to get the excess manufacturing chemicals off the coils (or whatever), but, as a nerd, I could not pass up this opportunity to taste a sample. I knew the water should be clean enough after its week of use, and new enough not yet be filled with too much algae and mould - I would not get the chance again.
It tasted much like tap water, maybe a slightly different smell. I probably only had a couple of glasses worth, drinking direct from
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You must have taken the red pill too early
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It's not like distilled water at all, because it hasn't been at a high temperature. Not many things can live in a tiny water droplet, but some pathogens can.
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This ought to be easy enough to keep clean.
Hydrophobic coatings are already in use on self-cleaning glass - because the water rolls right off, water based things (like micro-organisms, algae, etc), and also dry dust, get washed off very quickly. It should be cleaner than a metallic condenser ; you might have to put a particle filter in if you can't tolerate a little dust in your water.
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Next step (Score:2)
Or maybe market it. I'm not good at prioritizing steps.
How broadly useful? (Score:2)
The Namid Desert Beatle is a badass, of that there can be no doubt; but it also exists in a highly peculiar environment: practically zero precipitation; but fairly reliable daily fog rolling in, available to be collected. In an environment where the peaks and valleys of ambient humidity are less dramatic, and it either just rains fairly frequently, or is dry all the time, its extremely clever surface structure would be for nothing.
How much of the world actually encounters regular airborne water but virtuall
Re:How broadly useful? (Score:5, Informative)
How much of the world actually encounters regular airborne water but virtually no usable rain?
It's common for much of the year near coastlines but only in temperate zones, so it can only serve 40% or so of the world's population. Guess we should throw it over, like the electric car :)
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Wait, you're saying that 40% of the world's population lives in wet coastal areas that don't get rain?
Can you point to them on a map?
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Wait, you're saying that 40% of the world's population lives in wet coastal areas that don't get rain?
I made that number up. And it's not that the areas don't get rain, they don't get rain every day. Sometimes they go months without rain, but they have daily fog. On the west coast of the USA you can look up maps of where the redwood trees used to be to find out the optimal locations, for example. That covers from point sur up into Canada, eh.
Any place it's foggy more days than it's rainy, it would be useful. Maybe not necessary, but what's bad about a water bottle refilling itself? Are you worried about glo
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A device that can turn Fog into anything else seems broadly usefull to me!
Sequoia Sempervirens (hope I got that right) can turn it into something like rain. That's not a bad deal.
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Everywhere on earth at ground level, but amounts of humidity vary and the less humid it is the harder it is to extract a given amount.
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How much of the world actually encounters regular airborne water but virtually no usable rain?
Most places where the desert meets the sea. Even inland deserts like those found here in Oz commonly have dew forming in the early morning because of the dramatic day/night temperature difference. It's how most of the desert plants and bugs survive, that particular beetle is just an extraordinary example of the technique.
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Plenty of places don't get as much rain as they could use. In my city it rains a lot but it's quite concentrated in spring and autumn: we can easily go for 4 months over the summer without any rain but with temperatures above 30C and humidity of about 70%. If this technology can condense water cheaply then farmers (and golf course owners) would probably be quite keen on it. Whether the long-term consequences would make people curse them for using it is another question, of course...
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Thermodynamics (Score:3)
Water has a specific heat vaporisation of 2260kJ/kg [wikipedia.org]. So can we make a slow working refrigerator without the need for a compressor from this?
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The bottle requires an energy input, they are using solar. The submitted article is based on a slightly fuller one: http://www.pri.org/stories/science/technology/scientist-takes-inspiration-from-natural-world-to-create-self-filling-water-bottle-12154.html [pri.org]
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The power is for forced airflow, not for the membrane.
People already make third-world refrigerators using evaporative cooling - a large, porous, ceramic container, with another in the middle, the intermediate space filled with damp sand.
But this is a condenser, so you're harvesting both water and heat. You want to radiate that heat away, so you can continue to collect water. This is why the beetle is black - to radiate the maximum heat away from it's body in the night, so it's carapace is nice and cool for
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This is why the beetle is black - to radiate the maximum heat away from it's body in the night, so it's carapace is nice and cool for it's water collection in the morning.
The color of the beetle, which is determined by its absorption spectrum in the visible, is irrelevant to its IR emissivity, which is what determines its cooling rate.
What you're saying is equivalent to "That's why the beetle is blue, so it will emit lots of red light in the dark."
If the beetle is black for thermal reasons it may be because there is an advantage to warming up as quickly as possible in the morning. This is a big deal for flying insects (I don't know if the beetle flies) as they need to warm
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Yes, but the airflow is required for it to work. Evaporative fridges have been used for a very very long time, but require energy input in the form of wind. The bottle is inverted in comparison to the evaporative fridge, thus it requires a fan or it would only accumulate a very very small amount of water...
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To cool, you have to vaporise water. Not condense it: this system should generate heat.
Using water to cool is done a lot already, in big scale with cooling towers you see at power plants, and on smaller scale for air conditioning systems. The disadvantage is of course that you can not cool to low temperatures, as water doesn't evaporate any more. So it works best for cooling down higher temperatures, like those in a power plant.
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I suppose I should have wrote more details. You are right about condensing heating up. The refrigerator I'm thinking of would be a system with an evaporative cooler on one end, and this material on the other. A low power heat pump fuelled only by fans.
(Speaking of heating up, can you make a mug out of it to keep my coffee hot?)
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Neither will work because for a fridge you're too close to the melting point of water (it's not just because they don't use water as cooling liquid in fridges), and for your coffee mug you're too close to the boiling point (and way above ambient temperatures) to make any condensation happen.
Whisky version? (Score:4, Funny)
Make one that does whisky and I'm sold.
I see a trend forming: (Score:2)
Self-milking cows can't be far away.
Desert Beetle files suit for patent infringement (Score:2)
Ban dihydrogen monoxide! (Score:2)
It kills! [archive.org]
Portability (Score:2)
If the performance numbers are really this good and you can run it off a reasonably sized solar cell, seems this would be great for hiking. Its no fun having to carry a large quantity of water, even relatively wet climates like the eastern US sometimes good water sources are farther apart than you'd like. That was my experience when I did the AT anyway.
I generally found I needed to carry 3 liters of water to not be thirsty between convenient opportunities to acquire more on hotter days. These were usua
My Yard is Full of Them! (Score:2)
These funny green thingies poking out of the ground seem to accumulate moisture from thin air every morning.
More evidence of visitation by technologically superior extraterrestrials?
You can also use the water bottle to kill Orat (Score:2)
Spoilers
Just throw the bottle at Orat as he is chasing you. He will swallow it and explode from all the water generated is situ.
Life imitating art (Score:2)
Pfft, I heard about this first on Cougar Town.
Obligatory (Score:2)
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Don't you mean ONE MEEEELION DOLLARS?
(somehow supervillains always have an accent, also this is to pass the yelling-filter)
Re:The air is not clean (Score:5, Funny)
Where could you get UV light from in the desert?
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Its called Solar water disinfection - SODIS [sodis.ch]
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Thimbleful of extra water.
They still have to drink their own recycled pee, sweat, and poopy-water all day.
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Because while fresh urine is sterile, it does contain very high concentrations of salt. That can very quickly reach toxic levels if you do that. You need to distill the water out and collect it in another container before you can drink it. The salt residue can then be disposed of.
NASA and the other space agencies have been doing this for years.
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Meanwhile, San Francisco's water is considerably better (some of the best water you can get in fact) and considerably cheaper. Of course, we just had to shoot down some conservationists who wanted to get rid of our water supply, but that's over now.
As for choosing your neighborhood, c