Author Topic: EEVblog #881 - Fontus Self Filling Water Bottle BUSTED!  (Read 64937 times)

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Offline TheAmmoniacal

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Re: EEVblog #881 - Fontus Self Filling Water Bottle BUSTED!
« Reply #75 on: May 20, 2016, 07:05:16 am »
I'd be more interested in this bottle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LifeSaver_bottle than a Fontus
« Last Edit: June 18, 2016, 08:59:56 pm by TheAmmoniacal »
 

Offline Dr. Frank

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Re: EEVblog #881 - Fontus Self Filling Water Bottle BUSTED!
« Reply #76 on: May 20, 2016, 07:06:42 am »
They are going for the old "We are saving the world, back us now, it's not thermodynamically impossible, and we'll reveal the data to backers once we get the money" trick.


Dave, you only busted this gadget for the case that they use Peltier cooling, as this kind of heat pump got a COP of around 1 or less only.
Although their proto design pictures indicate the usage of Peltier elements, they state, that these pictures do not reflect their actual solution..

What Stebanoid and me were saying, that due to general Thermodynamic Laws, this product can not work at all with these form factors (of solar panel and cooler).. in other words, their claims indirectly violate the laws of physics, similar to all these Perpetuum Mobile and "Free Energy" freaks.


To make this gadget work in this form factor , they would have to develop an extremely efficient and compact refrigerator, comprised of a near perfect Carnot heat pump: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pump, COP >= 30, and very efficient condenser and heat exchanger.
That all would require many mechanical problems to be solved, instead of electrical ones.

Such a heat pump has to be made of a miniaturized vapour-compression machine.. but a practical exemplar can achieve COP ~ 7..8 under these circumstances only.. and I really doubt they'd be capable of developing such a miniaturized machine.

The efficiency of heat exchanger, condenser and solar panel further reduce this COP factor, so their claims fall short by an order of magnitude, at least, but in a more fundamental way.

Frank
« Last Edit: May 20, 2016, 07:10:52 am by Dr. Frank »
 
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Offline EEVblogTopic starter

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Re: EEVblog #881 - Fontus Self Filling Water Bottle BUSTED!
« Reply #77 on: May 20, 2016, 08:02:21 am »
Dave, you only busted this gadget for the case that they use Peltier cooling, as this kind of heat pump got a COP of around 1 or less only.
Although their proto design pictures indicate the usage of Peltier elements, they state, that these pictures do not reflect their actual solution..

Of course they are using Peltier elements!
You are falling for their BS as they desperately gasp for breath trying to justify their claims.

Quote
What Stebanoid and me were saying, that due to general Thermodynamic Laws, this product can not work at all with these form factors (of solar panel and cooler).. in other words, their claims indirectly violate the laws of physics, similar to all these Perpetuum Mobile and "Free Energy" freaks.

Ok, fine, another argument entirely. I have not looked into that.
Not sure why you are taking me to task over it?  :-//

Quote
The efficiency of heat exchanger, condenser and solar panel further reduce this COP factor, so their claims fall short by an order of magnitude, at least, but in a more fundamental way.

Ok, great, another nail in the coffin.
 

Offline Dr. Frank

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Re: EEVblog #881 - Fontus Self Filling Water Bottle BUSTED!
« Reply #78 on: May 20, 2016, 08:51:34 am »
Of course they are using Peltier elements!
You are falling for their BS as they desperately gasp for breath trying to justify their claims.

I'm really not falling on their advertising bullshit, instead this fundamental physics argument really takes them away even the ever last breath.


Ok, fine, another argument entirely. I have not looked into that.
Not sure why you are taking me to task over it?  :-//

Sorry, it was not my intention at all to embarrass you, in no way!

I really appreciate your video - it is competent and well done, as always.

But it covers the electrical problem only, maybe leaving them some (mystic) way out.
So I wanted to add the physical argument, which is the final nail in their coffin.

Frank




 

Offline SydB

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Re: EEVblog #881 - Fontus Self Filling Water Bottle BUSTED!
« Reply #79 on: May 20, 2016, 10:25:53 am »
Dave, I did not want to take you to task either. I was just a bit confused about the order of the assumptions in your video. I think your videos are great!

Maybe all the backers are expecting them to create a system with a COP of >30??  :-//

I have no idea why someone would commit money to such an unlikely idea. I can only think, somehow, people feel like they are contributing to invention or science? Those that don't do the research deserve the snake oil they get.
« Last Edit: May 20, 2016, 10:33:17 am by SydB »
 

Offline Don Hills

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Re: EEVblog #881 - Fontus Self Filling Water Bottle BUSTED!
« Reply #80 on: May 20, 2016, 10:43:03 am »
A paper on this:
http://www.psipw.org/attachments/article/273/IJWRAE_1%282%29142-145.pdf

They got 1L of water per hour from a 120W panel with elements of 450mm x 15mm each side and a 6000rpm 15cm fan in a high humidity environment.
Good luck Fontus.

It seems to me that they have the system in that paper "backwards".
They heat the incoming air before cooling it to condense out the water. If I read the paper right, they heat it to increase the amount of water vapour it can hold. This is irrelevant, as they are not adding any additional water vapour - all they are doing is increasing the amount of heat that has to be removed in the cooler part to drop the temperature to dew point. I would have thought that it would be more efficient to do as several people here have siad, that is cool the air to dew point to extract the water, then pass it over the hot side to "recover" the energy.
 

Online Fungus

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Re: EEVblog #881 - Fontus Self Filling Water Bottle BUSTED!
« Reply #81 on: May 20, 2016, 01:10:09 pm »
I would have thought that it would be more efficient to do as several people here have siad, that is cool the air to dew point to extract the water, then pass it over the hot side to "recover" the energy.

How much more efficient could it be if you made a really fancy heatsink to do that? I'm guessing maybe twice as efficient. You'll two small mouthfuls per hour instead of one.

(I wonder if Fontus is reading this thread to steal "ideas" like the Batteriser Brothers do...)
 

Offline langwadt

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Re: EEVblog #881 - Fontus Self Filling Water Bottle BUSTED!
« Reply #82 on: May 20, 2016, 01:29:14 pm »
A paper on this:
http://www.psipw.org/attachments/article/273/IJWRAE_1%282%29142-145.pdf

They got 1L of water per hour from a 120W panel with elements of 450mm x 15mm each side and a 6000rpm 15cm fan in a high humidity environment.
Good luck Fontus.

It seems to me that they have the system in that paper "backwards".
They heat the incoming air before cooling it to condense out the water. If I read the paper right, they heat it to increase the amount of water vapour it can hold. This is irrelevant, as they are not adding any additional water vapour - all they are doing is increasing the amount of heat that has to be removed in the cooler part to drop the temperature to dew point. I would have thought that it would be more efficient to do as several people here have siad, that is cool the air to dew point to extract the water, then pass it over the hot side to "recover" the energy.

fig2 shows the air being cooled to condense water then passed over the hot side to help cool it

 

Offline rs20

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Re: EEVblog #881 - Fontus Self Filling Water Bottle BUSTED!
« Reply #83 on: May 20, 2016, 01:35:52 pm »
fig2 shows the air being cooled to condense water then passed over the hot side to help cool it

Um, no it doesn't. There's no "hot" or "cold" written anywhere on that diagram.

Furthermore, to quote the text "The moisture air is pumped first into the hot side of the Peltier element to increase the air temperature ... The air is then pushed to the cold side to condense the water moisture".

Don is correct, they screwed up, got it the wrong way around, and their reasoning is completely whacko. It'll still condense water, but less efficiently than if the hot side were totally separate, which in turn is even less efficient than putting it through the cold side first like, I dunno, every dehumidifier on the market.
 

Online Fungus

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Re: EEVblog #881 - Fontus Self Filling Water Bottle BUSTED!
« Reply #84 on: May 20, 2016, 01:41:44 pm »
fig2 shows the air being cooled to condense water then passed over the hot side to help cool it

fig2 doesn't label the hot/cold sides.

The text definitely says "hot first, then cold" - which seems ass-backwards to me.
 

Offline alter Ratz

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Re: EEVblog #881 - Fontus Self Filling Water Bottle BUSTED!
« Reply #85 on: May 20, 2016, 02:15:46 pm »
Dave, in order to produce water from steam you have to take energy out of steam, not to bring it. You have to take 250 W from the freezer in the bottle - it's a different case.

I completely agree with this post. It's like dissipating 100s of Watts using a heat sink and a fan with a few watts. However, the Energy has to be transported through the peltier element and the energy produced by the peltier element has to be dissipated too.

However, I still have my doubts that the whole thing works (especially the bike version). The main point is: Is the power produced by the solar cells high enough to create a temperature difference high enough to facilitate the necessary energy transport.

Best regards, Bernhard
 

Offline apis

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Re: EEVblog #881 - Fontus Self Filling Water Bottle BUSTED!
« Reply #86 on: May 20, 2016, 02:43:00 pm »
Here's someone who's made a blog post about typical domestic dehumidifier performance:
http://editorsean.com/articles/dehumidifier-frequently-asked-questions/

He states he gets about 1.1 litre per kWh and that there are industrial models that do about 2 litre per kWh. With a typical portable cell-phone charging solar panel that delivers about 1 A * 5 V = 5 W, it would take 900/5=180 hours of sunshine to generate one litre.

Even if we are generous and say they can get 15 W from the portable solar panel and have the same efficiency as a big industrial dehumidifier it would take about 500/15=33 hours of sunshine for a litre. :palm:

An then there's this:
Quote
Is the collected water safe for drinking?

Unfortunately, besides the water collected, dehumidifiers collect all sorts of airborne particles, including mould spores, viruses, pollen, bacteria and so on, making it unfit for consumption.  There are dehumidifiers on the market designed for this purpose, usually called something like “Air to water” appliances, but these have special filters designed to remove dust and UVC lamps to kill the germs to make the water suitable for consumption.
So they need additional filtering etc which will make the efficiency even lower.

And here bigclive does a teardown of the kind of peltier dehumidifier design we can expect. In the beginning we se how much the 36 W unit generated after running for 10 hours. He doesn't say how much but looks like about 0.1 litre or so. So expect no more than about a teaspoon of water per hour of sunshine from the fontus. :-DD
« Last Edit: May 20, 2016, 02:52:33 pm by apis »
 
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Offline EEVblogTopic starter

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Re: EEVblog #881 - Fontus Self Filling Water Bottle BUSTED!
« Reply #87 on: May 20, 2016, 02:51:36 pm »
Dave, in order to produce water from steam you have to take energy out of steam, not to bring it. You have to take 250 W from the freezer in the bottle - it's a different case.

I completely agree with this post.

The Peltier device is taking energy out of the steam, it's cooling the air down, thus removing heat/energy. You have to power the peltier device in order to do that.
Energy goes into the peltier, energy is extracted out of the air.
There is a phase change energy threshold you pay in doing that, and that's latent heat.


I don't know why anyone would think I was talking about using the peltier to put energy in and heating it up the air?
 

Offline jeremybarker

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Re: EEVblog #881 - Fontus Self Filling Water Bottle BUSTED!
« Reply #88 on: May 22, 2016, 04:10:04 pm »
It seems this thing reached the Top 20 stage of the James Dyson Award in 2014. Looking at their website you discover the following gem:
"I conducted a series of experiments trying to identify the ideal conditions, materials and cooling systems. I simulated different climatic conditions in my bathroom, modifying the air temperature and humidity. After more than 30 experiments, I finally achieved a constant drop-flow of one drop of condensed water per minute."

As this thing has been produced by an industrial designer this doesn't really surprise me. It strikes me as describing a typically crap experiment that no credible scientist or engineer would ever want to be associated with.
« Last Edit: May 22, 2016, 04:12:57 pm by jeremybarker »
 

Offline SydB

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Re: EEVblog #881 - Fontus Self Filling Water Bottle BUSTED!
« Reply #89 on: May 22, 2016, 04:45:44 pm »
I don't know why anyone would think I was talking about using the peltier to put energy in and heating it up the air?

Maybe because you used the latent heat calculation result of vapour to liquid as the amount of energy you need to put into the system without mentioning your assumption about COP first. You talk about it later.
« Last Edit: May 22, 2016, 04:47:42 pm by SydB »
 

Offline rrinker

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Re: EEVblog #881 - Fontus Self Filling Water Bottle BUSTED!
« Reply #90 on: May 22, 2016, 07:08:28 pm »
Googling Peltier Dehumidifiers I hit on Big Clive's teardown as well as this one - a 60 watt model that according th the guy's somewhat unscientific test managed to pull out 100ml of water - in THREE DAYS.

https://secretscotland.wordpress.com/2013/09/13/the-useless-world-of-the-peltier-effect-dehumidifier/



 

Offline Neilm

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Re: EEVblog #881 - Fontus Self Filling Water Bottle BUSTED!
« Reply #91 on: May 23, 2016, 07:47:26 pm »
I have just been given a self filling water bottle.

I went to the tap - and filled it myself
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe. - Albert Einstein
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Offline EEVblogTopic starter

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Re: EEVblog #881 - Fontus Self Filling Water Bottle BUSTED!
« Reply #92 on: May 25, 2016, 11:02:08 am »
Oh dear:  :palm:
They just admitted they have palm off the development to an external engineering company, because, you know, all it takes it money and engineers can do anything  ::)
And they have only just started building prototypes to suss out how much energy they need  :-DD

 

Offline rrinker

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Re: EEVblog #881 - Fontus Self Filling Water Bottle BUSTED!
« Reply #93 on: May 25, 2016, 12:03:44 pm »
 Boom, right to the bullshit non-answer to Michael's question. As you have shown, data are readily available on the components of the proposed system and it clearly shows this can't possibly work as described. Oh but when we couple it together in our "special" way it will suddenly become 1000% (or is that 800%?) more efficient and actually do what we say it will do. Right....
 

Offline apis

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Re: EEVblog #881 - Fontus Self Filling Water Bottle BUSTED!
« Reply #94 on: May 25, 2016, 03:42:47 pm »
Well, at least I don't get the impression he/they are doing this with the intention to scam people, unlike batteriser. In this case they just don't seem to know what they are doing (but who knows). What's sad is that they've gotten several awards for this idea that is so easy to show will not work, apparently they care so little they didn't bother to do any research at all or ask an expert of it could possibly work.
 

Offline rrinker

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Re: EEVblog #881 - Fontus Self Filling Water Bottle BUSTED!
« Reply #95 on: May 25, 2016, 11:06:09 pm »
 It makes you wonder where you can go for reliable information - products like this and Batteriser winning awards, some of them from purported technical publications. Clearly they are handing out these awards based on "it looks cool" not anything scientific. And of course when the average person who lacks the ability to actually analyze these things sees that it won an award from what is supposed to be an authority on the technical details, they jump right in and back the campaign. If I were REALLY cynical I'd say it was all collusion.  >:D

 

Online Fungus

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Re: EEVblog #881 - Fontus Self Filling Water Bottle BUSTED!
« Reply #96 on: May 26, 2016, 12:06:42 pm »
In this case they just don't seem to know what they are doing (but who knows).

People can be clueless, even tech writers, but...  how can you give a "Product of the Year" award to something you've never even held in you hand?

 

Offline daqq

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Re: EEVblog #881 - Fontus Self Filling Water Bottle BUSTED!
« Reply #97 on: May 26, 2016, 05:51:59 pm »
Quote
Couldn't the product work a lot better if they used the wheel of the bike as a power source? I think that should generate around 200Wh of power per hour of power which would at least be a huge upgrade from that tiny crap solar panel they are planning on using.
Well, have fun. The average human can generate around 50W to 150W, a trained pro can go up to 400W. I'm pretty sure that I would need to drink more than I could condensate out of the air. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_power

Relevant video:
« Last Edit: May 26, 2016, 05:58:30 pm by daqq »
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Offline gardner

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Re: EEVblog #881 - Fontus Self Filling Water Bottle BUSTED!
« Reply #98 on: May 28, 2016, 06:39:23 pm »
Relevant video

They made a total duffer mistake in that video: they lit up both slots of the toaster even though only one slot was loaded.  They're already out by a factor of two how much energy to toast a slice, since they could have done two with the same energy!
--- Gardner
 

Offline SydB

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Re: EEVblog #881 - Fontus Self Filling Water Bottle BUSTED!
« Reply #99 on: May 31, 2016, 10:03:25 am »
It makes you wonder where you can go for reliable information - products like this and Batteriser winning awards, some of them from purported technical publications. Clearly they are handing out these awards based on "it looks cool" not anything scientific. And of course when the average person who lacks the ability to actually analyze these things sees that it won an award from what is supposed to be an authority on the technical details, they jump right in and back the campaign. If I were REALLY cynical I'd say it was all collusion.  >:D

I agree. Awards are often given for 'political' reasons. As to technical merit, it depends on the competence of the award committee. I often given my 4yr old an award.

The general public are losing touch with solid science and engineering protocol e.g. proof of concept. Now everyone has a smart phone and can tweet and comment, they think they are an expert just because they have the ability to talk about it.
« Last Edit: May 31, 2016, 10:06:47 am by SydB »
 


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