EEVblog #881 - Fontus Self Filling Water Bottle BUSTED!

[EEVblog]

Dave does basic back-of-the-envelope thermodynamic calculations to prove the Fontus Airo & Ryde self filling water bottle campaign on Indiegogo is full of hot air instead of water.
It's 100% baloney!

[StuUK]

1,140% of $30,000 goal, oh jeez, yet more mugs out there.....

[elgonzo]

1,140% of $30,000 goal, oh jeez, yet more mugs out there.....

There is a sucker born every minute. And some of those suckers are probably from the campaigners social circle, to (*cough*) kickstart the campaign so to speak.

Also, tl;dr for those without time to watch the video: Indiegogo, duh...

[FrankBuss]

[EEVblog]

Also, tl;dr for those without time to watch the video: Indiegogo, duh...

It's almost like that now.
Indiegogo = instant impractical ideas
Kickstarter = probably practical, will more likely fail on financials or production.

[elgonzo]

Also, tl;dr for those without time to watch the video: Indiegogo, duh...

It's almost like that now.
Indiegogo = instant impractical ideas
Kickstarter = probably practical, will more likely fail on financials or production.

I sometimes wonder whether there will still be anyone with a sincere and diligent project proposal in the future choosing Indiegogo as crowdfunding platform. "You are known by the company you keep" --  it's hard to argue against that...

[r4ptor]

Shit, this crap is even from my home country it appears.

Oh boy. I can say you one thing, we students here at the technical universities are laughing our ass of about this. 

[Razor512]

The device truly works, you can even observe the results, the reason why you are skeptical, is because you do not take the proper initial steps prior to viewing the product.

The first step requires you to fill the entire bottle with LSD, and then chug it.

The LSD then helps you to see the machine working as intended.

Without the LSD, logic takes over and thinks look disappointing.

[Arjan Emm]

I'm afraid the back of the envolope calculations are wrong. Atleast the 1L/h statement. Whatever time it takes, you always need a minimum of 2264 KJ of energy to produce 1 liter of water. So that's 2264000/60/150= 250 watts for 150 minuts or 2.5 hours. To produce 1l/h you need 630 watt. So 2.5 times worse as you  stated. 2264000/3600.
You devide by 2.5 twice for some reason. Very nice video anyway. Always good to see these scams busted. Keep it up !

[daqq]

Thanks Dave for the video. I particularly like your enraged super E letter used in system

[abaxas]

Who knows, maybe the solar cell is 100% efficient  O0

[bitwelder]

Who knows, maybe the solar cell is 100% 800% efficient  O0

That's more like it.

[Fady]

Where can I find the link Dave mentioned at 14:52?

[Dr. Frank]

Sorry Dave, at 4:50 you made an error of units  in your calculation, mixing Energy and Power, or missing the evaluated time:
905kJ/l = 251Wh/l (not Watt/l).
So in 150 min = 2.5h, you would 'only' need a 100W panel.


This energy argument also is not directly convincing, if you think of physical 'heat pumps'.. (e.g. inversely running Sterling motor)
These machines have an efficiency, which is by definition >> 1, so you may pump these 905kJ out of the vapor by a fraction of equivalent in electrical energy, theoretically.

A practical machine of that sort (~ 40..60°C, 100% humidity) is the tumble dryer, which needs about 1.6kWh to condense several liters water out of the laundry.. if you have a modern device (EU energy rating A+++) with heat exchanger.

So the most obvious practical argument would be, that this device does not consist of the necessary miniaturized parts, like heat pump, condenser, heat exchanger, and so on.

Frank

[station240]

I lost it when it became clear Dave had put a stamp + name and address on the back of envelope calculations so he could mail it.

[SaabFAN]

Don't be too harsh on those people. They just forgot to mention the capsule with LIQUID NITROGEN to cool the hot side of the peltier-element.
Happens even to the best

[Arjan Emm]

Sorry Dave, at 4:50 you made an error of units  in your calculation, mixing Energy and Power, or missing the evaluated time:
905kJ/l = 251Wh/l (not Watt/l).
So in 150 min = 2.5h, you would 'only' need a 100W panel.
frank

If you keep on deviding by 2.5 at some point this becomes a viable device.

[Stebanoid]

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.
Lat's do the math.

dew point for 40C 90% is Tc = 37 C = 310.15 K
ambient temperature Ta = 40C = 313.15 K
Diameter of a hot radiator d= 6cm= 0.06m
Speed of a cyclist = 15 km/h = 4.16 m/s
Isobaric volumetric heat capacity of air C=0.0013 J*cm^-3*K^-1 = 1300 J*m^-1*K^-1

So for Carnot cycle (ideal case) we have
W = Wh*(1-Tc/Th)
where W = power of the heat engine, Wh - Power of the heat source, Tc - temeperature of the cooler, Th - temperature of the heater.
Engine produces power W taking power Wh from the heat source and bringing part of it Wc to cooler.
As long as Carnot engine is reversable we can bring power to it taking power Wc from the cooler and moving Wh=Wc+W to the heater. We know that we have to move Wc=250W from the freezer. Let's find how much power W we need for that.
We know that Tc=310.15 K because it's a dew point we need to get water.
Let's find Th.
All Wt has to be blown out by air, moving through the radiator of the system.
Every second through the cylinder d=0.06 moving with a speed 4.16 m/s passes V=0.01 m^3/s of air.
If heat exchange is perfect air comes out with temperature Th and moves away
(Th-Ta)*C*V of power
Wh = (Th-Ta)*C*V
on the other hand Wh = W/(1-Tc/Th) = (Wh-Wc)/(1-Tc/Th)
Wh=Wc*Th/Tc

(Th-Ta)*C*V = Wc*Th/Tc
Th = V*C*Ta/(V*C - Wc/Tc) = 333.8 K

W=Wc*(Th/Tc-1) = 19 W (to move 250 W from the bottle)

What's the size of a 19 W panel?

[Stebanoid]

Of course, if they want to use Peltier cooler with a 10% of efficiency of the Carnot cycle, they have to find 190 W of power. And because of that additional power we have to dissipate, our hot radiator will be much hotter and it leads to even less efficient cooling which leads to even more power consumption and so on. 

[TheAmmoniacal]

And what about the water in the bottle continuously evaporating and recondensing on the peltier? Lots of wasted energy.

[Stebanoid]

In ideal case in thermally isolated bottle we have a water with temperature of the dew point and 100% humidity. But in real life it will take some energy of course.

[jmacqueen]

And then there's this paper from the "International Journal of Water Resources and Arid Environments" that draws a litre of water an hour using the same basic technology at 120w of solar power. Given they are likely at high temp and humidity..

But they use multiple peltier devices and they run the air first through the hot side heatsink so it can gain more moisture, and then run it through cold side heatsink.

But still published results of a liter per hour at just 120w solar.

http://www.psipw.org/attachments/article/273/IJWRAE_1%282%29142-145.pdf?

Could it be made even more efficient with better heat transfer technology in larger surface area heatsinks?

[Stebanoid]

Yep. If we use cooled and dehumidified air for cooling of the hot radiator we will get Th=330
And W= 16.5 W

[Stebanoid]

Could it be made even more efficient with better heat transfer technology in larger surface area heatsinks?

From equation I got follows that yes.
But Israel uses reverse osmosis for water harvesting. I think that they did the math too and it's more efficient.
Basically water is not a problem in wet environment. It's usually a problem in dry climate. And you cannot harvest water from dry air. Dew point for 40C 20% is 13C. For 40C 10% is 3C !!!

[jmacqueen]

Yeah there is a lot of reverse osmosis water harvesting in that whole region. Seems to be the dominant technology, I assume that is for several reasons. Sailboats use R.O. pretty exclusively as well they call it a "watermaker", and you can even buy a hand pump R.O. system for your emergency lift raft or whatever.

In a survival situation I could likely use a couple of plastic garbage bags to harvest enough water to survive on using condensation, probably more than the indiegogo device can make.

I am curious though if that liter per hour at 120w they got in the paper could be refined and reduced to maybe 70w?, their heat sinks appeared to be off the shelf hack together stuff. How much room for improvement is there in improving thermal flow and surface area?? 10%?, 20%? 50%?

[EEVblog]

Sorry Dave, at 4:50 you made an error of units  in your calculation, mixing Energy and Power, or missing the evaluated time:
905kJ/l = 251Wh/l (not Watt/l).

Yes, that's been fixed in annotation.

So in 150 min = 2.5h, you would 'only' need a 100W panel.

No.
You have to extract 2264kJ just for the phase transition to get 1L of water from the air in 1 hour. 2264kJ = 628Wh
So that's 628W if you do it in an hour, or 251W if you do it over 2.5 hours.

[rs20]

You have to extract 2264kJ just for the phase transition to get 1L of water from the air in 1 hour.

<pedantic>FTFY. You don't need any time measurements in this statement at all. 1L of water condensed is 2264kJ, no matter if it's a nanosecond or a year.

[EEVblog]

<pedantic>FTFY. You don't need any time measurements in this statement at all. 1L of water condensed is 2264kJ, no matter if it's a nanosecond or a year.

Yep, correct.
I have a bad habit of always anchoring everything to a time reference for this thing, because this product and it's claims are all about time.
So I'll rephrase:
You have to extract 2264kJ just for the phase transition to get 1L of water.
For 1 hour reference:
2264kJ = 628Wh
So that's 628W if you do it in an hour, or 251W if you do it over 2.5 hours.

[AF6LJ]

I knew there was a reason why I had to replace the shunt across my BullShit meter from a piece of twelve gauge wire to a piece of 00.

[EEVblog]

So Fontus just admitted on Facebook that their numbers are pie-in-the-sky 

https://www.facebook.com/Fontus2016/

[Muttley Snickers]

The mathematics and physics involved here are outside the realm of my capabilities so I am happy to sit this one out and will simply wait for the rain to come over so I can fill my water bottle or turn the tap on, either way 100% guaranteed with little effort, risk or outlay.

Some chatter and good reading to be had here.
https://www.metabunk.org/fontus-self-filling-water-bottle-indiegogo-scam-campaign.t7495/

Australia Post are really going to struggle with this one below.

[EEVblog]

Some people giving them the what-for:

[nitro2k01]

Paul's comment is now gone, but Antonio's is still up.

[SEKCobra]

Im from Austria and I tried looking up what kinda funding they got, but it doesn't seem like they got actual government support. Probably just saying that to seem more legit.

[SEKCobra]

He used the word investor on indiegogo, he doesn't know what he's talking about either ^^

[Halcyon]

The thing is, even if magic happened and it was able to provide any decent quantity of water, I'm not sure I'd want to be drinking all the crap and contaminants from the air, especially from the 'Ryde' version where it's going to be sucking in diesel particulate and car exhaust (assuming that most people ride on or near roads).

I can have fairly pure, clean water straight out of most taps (not to mention the added benefit of fluoride). The Fontus is just one damn expensive water bottle. I have a plastic water bottle that holds more water than this thing and even has a little carbon filter built-in.

I also find their claim of "No need to plan your tour around water resources" a bit rich. One would die of dehydration if they were to follow this advice together with "Forget about carrying heavy water loads!"

Anyway, maybe after all this, they'll take Roohparvar's approach and claim "big Coca-Cola" is preventing them from producing the product as it'll hit their bottled water sales or such nonsense, or there was a flood and their "engineering team" is working hard to get the product out to backers... "soon"...

[VK3DRB]

From their website:

"Atmospheric water is clean and does not contain harmful micro-organisms." Haven't they heard of the common cold? Or the Spanish 'flu.

"... (iii) even non-production of the Perk. In the latter case there will be no Perk delivered to the Contributor. Contributions will not be refunded. By making a Contribution the Contributors explicitly acknowledge the risks associated with the occurrence of one of the aforementioned events." In other words, "A fool and his money are soon parted."

This story about being scammed beggars belief ...
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/leader/east/wheelers-hill-grandmother-targeted-by-scammers-pretending-to-be-from-the-australian-taxation-office/news-story/6f7a715772038ba0bd602727c423e08a#load-story-comments

[rollatorwieltje]

One of the AC units we have drains into a bottle as the drain pump is horribly noisy. It "produces" about 1 or 2 liters over night (depends on conditions of course), and that is a "2kW" unit unit. It draws about 600W when running. And I'm not sure if I would actually want to drink that, considering how horrible it smells. I may be slightly behind schedule on cleaning my AC units though.

Somewhat ironically the optimal conditions for this device are actually "rainforest". You'd be better off actually waiting for rain if you want fresh water

[Fungus]

Paul's comment is now gone, but Antonio's is still up.

Deleting comments is always a sign of confidence in your product.

[Fungus]

One of the AC units we have drains into a bottle as the drain pump is horribly noisy. It "produces" about 1 or 2 liters over night (depends on conditions of course), and that is a "2kW" unit unit. It draws about 600W when running. And I'm not sure if I would actually want to drink that, considering how horrible it smells. I may be slightly behind schedule on cleaning my AC units though.

You obviously don't live in a very humid place. I can fill 2 or 3 buckets a day in summer, no problem.

[SydB]

What a shame the $300,000 was not directed into scientific research instead. The internet is the snake oil salesman's dream.

Be careful regarding latent heat. Gas to liquid phase change is a release of energy (hydrogen bonds formed = energy release). On the surface of it, then why would we need to input energy? Because we need to cool and dump the heat somewhere (including most of the energy we put in to doing that!). This is why anybody that has had anything to do with Peltier cooling knows that you need 'big' surface areas and 'big' energy (pumps for liquid cooling or fans for air cooling) to make 'much' difference. (It is why domestic refrigerators still do not, generally, use Peltier cooling; it is not practically very efficient. Sure, they are now used for 'beer coolers' but these can only manage a few degrees of temperature change and the costs and practical manufacturing aspects work out better for a Peltier cooler + heatsink + fan compared to a pump + pressurised (special) gas fridge system.)

It is quite an interesting topic. For example, consider if it is possible to actually use the energy generated from the phase change to dump the excess energy (e.g. drive fans)! It is some nice physics that brings in thermodynamics, heat engines and, importantly, practicalities for an engineer. The inefficiencies of energy conversion will/may (never say never) sting you every time.

In summary, dumping the heat energy generated from changing water vapour to liquid (through cooling) requires energy but how much is not immediately apparent simply from a latent heat calculation. See heat engines. But absolutely, this device concept appears to be rubbish; primarily because of the practical cooling required and the scarcity of water in air.

[EEVblog]

In summary, dumping the heat generated from changing water vapour to liquid requires energy but how much is not immediately apparent simply from a latent heat calculation.

Of course. But good enough for a back-of-the-envelope ballpark feasibility calculation (which some people seem to forget this was).
If the calc came out well within an order of magnitude, then you go "ok, lets look deeper into the practical implementations" etc and you wouldn't write it off.
But when the calc comes out well over that, possibly two orders out of the ballpark, you take your bat and go home.

Of course, no calculation was even needed, simply looking at the measured outputs of other commercial dehumidifiers is enough to tell you the Fontus stands no chance of working as claimed. You can bet your bottom dollar if the likes of Delonghi and GE et.al can't even get close, some dude on Indiegogo with admittedly zero data, and not even a fully working prototype, is probably not going to do it.

But that's just closed minded me. Insert analogy about the horse and cart and the automobile here 

[langwadt]

In summary, dumping the heat generated from changing water vapour to liquid requires energy but how much is not immediately apparent simply from a latent heat calculation.

Of course. But good enough for a back-of-the-envelope ballpark feasibility calculation (which some people seem to forget this was).
If the calc came out well within an order of magnitude, then you go "ok, lets look deeper into the practical implementations" etc and you wouldn't write it off.
But when the calc comes out well over that, possibly two orders out of the ballpark, you take your bat and go home.

Of course, no calculation was even needed, simply looking at the measured outputs of other commercial dehumidifiers is enough to tell you the Fontus stands no chance of working as claimed. You can bet your bottom dollar if the likes of Delonghi and GE et.al can't even get close, some dude on Indiegogo with admittedly zero data, and not even a fully working prototype, is probably not going to do it.

But that's just closed minded me. Insert analogy about the horse and cart and the automobile here 

you linear thinker,..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=805&v=ukgnU2aXM2c

[SydB]

In summary, dumping the heat generated from changing water vapour to liquid requires energy but how much is not immediately apparent simply from a latent heat calculation.

Of course. But good enough for a back-of-the-envelope ballpark feasibility calculation (which some people seem to forget this was).

Dave, I am not trying to be awkward here but can you help me understand why a calculation of latent heat should, in any way, imply how much energy you need to dump that heat? Your video was about using fundamental physics to establish the device is rubbish so where is the fundamental physics that connects latent heat to dumping it? I don't get it.

For example, let us say we need to dump 1kJ of heat energy and we are at a temperature above ambient. That will require a lot less energy if it is sitting in a river of liquid nitrogen compared to sitting in a vacuum.

[Groucho2005]

The internet is the snake oil salesman's dream.

Love it, this goes in my box of cool quotes.

[Razor512]

It takes a long time the generate the water, and the container needs an opening in order for the water to drip into. How much water will evaporate, and either disappear, or re-condense on the cooler, as compared to new water entering the container?

[Stebanoid]

In summary, dumping the heat generated from changing water vapour to liquid requires energy but how much is not immediately apparent simply from a latent heat calculation.

Of course. But good enough for a back-of-the-envelope ballpark feasibility calculation (which some people seem to forget this was).

Dave, I am not trying to be awkward here but can you help me understand why a calculation of latent heat should, in any way, imply how much energy you need to dump that heat? Your video was about using fundamental physics to establish the device is rubbish so where is the fundamental physics that connects latent heat to dumping it? I don't get it.

For example, let us say we need to dump 1kJ of heat energy and we are at a temperature above ambient. That will require a lot less energy if it is sitting in a river of liquid nitrogen compared to sitting in a vacuum.

Look at my calculations here https://www.eevblog.com/forum/blog/eevblog-881-fontus-self-filling-water-bottle-busted!/msg942834/#msg942834 we need 16W to dump 250 W in the best case. With Peltier modules we need more then 10 times more  because of their poor efficiency.

[matkar]

I haven't looked at the comments, maybe someone pointed this out already.
I stopped watching somewhere after Dave mentioned the 2264 kJ/kg for phase changing. There is your mistake. Right at the beginning. You're dealing with humid air, not clean water vapor. Entirely different equations apply there.
What you need to look is Mollier diagram for humid air. I couldn't find a decent diagram online but here is an example: http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/psychrometric-chart-mollier-d_27.html
If we extrapolate the diagram you can see you need to take away roughly 10kJ from 1kg of humid air to extract 0,02 kg of water from the air with 90% humidity and 40°C by cooling it to roughly 18°C. So in total you'd need 500kJ of energy to produce a liter of water from 50kg of humid air.
The greater the humidity and higher the temperature the easier it is to extract the water from the air.

I won't do further analysis if the thing is viable from the electrical standpoint. I just wanted to point out the mistake.

[nwvlab]

What makes me sad is that you can't even report this campaign to Indiegogo (I tried, but there's no option like "this cannot work").

Because the campaign does not contain prohibited content. It "just" contains things that simply do not work :/

[jmacqueen]

"If we extrapolate the diagram you can see you need to take away roughly 10kJ from 1kg of humid air to extract 0,02 kg of water from the air with 90% humidity and 40°C by cooling it to roughly 18°C. So in total you'd need 500kJ of energy to produce a liter of water from 50kg of humid air.
The greater the humidity and higher the temperature the easier it is to extract the water from the air."

That seems to line up pretty well with the paper that showed a solar powered peltier device prototype that when tested delivered 1 liter of water per hour on 120w of solar. That would roughly line up with 500kj I think. http://www.psipw.org/attachments/article/273/IJWRAE_1%282%29142-145.pdf

Dave has to be way off in his calculations, I have a little window AC unit that draws about 500 watts that condenses out more than a liter an hour, easily filling a bucket in one day running only intermittently. I actually kept a bucket under it to catch the "distilled" condensed water for other uses.

[splin]

I haven't looked at the comments, maybe someone pointed this out already.
I stopped watching somewhere after Dave mentioned the 2264 kJ/kg for phase changing. There is your mistake. Right at the beginning. You're dealing with humid air, not clean water vapor. Entirely different equations apply there.
What you need to look is Mollier diagram for humid air. I couldn't find a decent diagram online but here is an example: http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/psychrometric-chart-mollier-d_27.html
If we extrapolate the diagram you can see you need to take away roughly 10kJ from 1kg of humid air to extract 0,02 kg of water from the air with 90% humidity and 40°C by cooling it to roughly 18°C. So in total you'd need 500kJ of energy to produce a liter of water from 50kg of humid air.
The greater the humidity and higher the temperature the easier it is to extract the water from the air.

I won't do further analysis if the thing is viable from the electrical standpoint. I just wanted to point out the mistake.

Wrong!!! look at http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/cooling-dehumidifying-air-d_695.html

The energy to cool humid air has two components - that needed for the sensible cooling of both the air and the water vapour (which is not much more than 1010J/kg/K of dry air) to reduce the temperature to the dew point, plus the 2502kJ per kg of water per degree Kelvin energy of latent heat to condense the water. It's clearly shown in the example.

Note that the 2502kJ/kg/K in the example (should actually be 2466) differs from Dave's 2264kj/kg/K figure because of the different temperatures involved - Dave got it wrong because that is the value for water at 100C. At 38C (the dew point for 90% RH) it's actually worse - 2410kj/kg/K! If he was being picky he could have also added the sensible cooling element (to coil the air by 2 degrees C down to the dew point) as well but it only makes a couple of % difference.

[splin]

Dave is quite right in that the project is entirely implausible but it is possible to get decent COPs out of Peltiers. For a delta T of 8C the COP can exceed 5 which means the panel would only need to be 50W (still huge). To get that COP you'd have to run Peltiers at around 10 to 12% of their peak voltage, and 50mm square devices would only pump around 20 to 30W each at most (perhaps 5% of Qmax). Thus you'd need at least 10 of them but they are pretty cheap on Ebay. They would weigh around 250g in total so not too bad.

Delta T of 8C isn't much so you would need some decent heatsinks, but having lots of Peltiers helps considerably by increasing the area through which the 300W (@ COP = 5) of heat has to flow and thus the temperature differences required at the Peltier/heatsink interfaces. Using the cooled, dehumidified air to cool the heatsink would also help a bit. Still 300W, Delta T = 8 means heatsinks with less than .027C/Wwith moving air. How fast can you peddle? 

Drop Delta T to 4C and COP could in theory exceed 7 or 8 and you would need less of them as they could transfer over 40W apiece at the lower delta T. The heatsinking problem would get more difficult but not impossible - it would probably only need a few hundred kilos or so of aluminium or copper...

Perhaps one of the most difficult problems would be managing the airflow so it spends just long enough on the cold side to release sufficient of its water but not getting cooled below the dew point any more than necessary wasting energy. If it flows too quickly though energy is wasting by sensible cooling of the air + water vapour, but not enough to condense any or all of its water. Quite tricky I'd have thought as you would need to be able to measure RH fairly accurately.

Might be more sensible to carry a few bottles of water and flog them to your cycling buddies examining their few drops of tepid, polluted condensate (distilled eau d'cyclist sweat anyone?) after a few hours of cycling in 40C/90%RH conditions. 

[petters]

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.

Amazed they even tried going that route, guess solar is hip these days

[rs20]

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 200W of power per hour ...

What is it with people in this thread incorrectly tacking "per hour" on things which are already dimensionally consistent?

[TheAmmoniacal]

I don't understand why people keep saying Dave is wrong there. The process of condensation is exothermic (it releases energy) equivalent to the heat of vaporization (just opposite sign), which is 2257 kJ/kg. Whatever energy is dumped into the peltier to heat it up will have to be reversed by energy put back into the peltier to cool that side down again.

So the way I interpret this, 626.9 Wh is the energy you need just to keep the peltier at the same temperature while 1 kg of water condenses on it.

It might definitely be more complicated than it looks.. 

[rs20]

Whatever energy is dumped into the peltier to heat it up will have to be reversed by energy put back into the peltier to cool that side down again.

If you put 100J of electrical energy into a typical air conditioner with a COP of 3 or 4 or so, 300J of heat are removed from the cold side and 400J of heat are delivered to the hot side. So if you were to assume that removing 300J of heat from something requires at least 300J of electrical energy, you'd be proven dead wrong by every air conditioner on the market. Look up "air conditioner coefficient of performance" for more details. See earlier posts about the Carnot cycle for discussions of theoretical optimums (spoiler: theoretical optimum are even better than air conditioners, and even further away from your assumption.)

Note that real-world peltier devices are typically so poor that they deliver a COP that barely reaches 1, so it just so happens to turn out that your assumption does typically hold true for peltier devices in "typical" situations. But it's certainly not enforced by the laws of thermodynamics. None of this changes the fact that the Fontus is completely bogus.

[TheAmmoniacal]

I will happily admit that the situation is entirely different when it comes to heat pumps / heat exchangers / stuff with compressors and refrigerant. I just didn't think these concepts applied very well to Peltiers (if at all), but of course they do to some extent.

[EEVblog]

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 200W of power per hour ...

What is it with people in this thread incorrectly tacking "per hour" on things which are already dimensionally consistent?

For me it's just a habit, like AC Current.

[fubar.gr]

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 200W of power per hour which would at least be a huge upgrade from that tiny crap solar panel they are planning on using.

Amazed they even tried going that route, guess solar is hip these days

A top level endurance cyclist can generate around 400 watts of power for several hours. This is not much.

The self filling bottle would essentially piss away half of their available power for just a trickle of water.

It would be orders of magnitude more efficient to simply carry a Camelbak backpack filled with water.

[Fungus]

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 200W of power per hour ...

What is it with people in this thread incorrectly tacking "per hour" on things which are already dimensionally consistent?

For me it's just a habit, like AC Current.

"AC Current" makes sense because the "C" in "AC" isn't really a unit and you need to distinguish between AC Volts and AC Amperes.

"200W per hour" is a semantic disaster though.


True story: Here in Spain they measure rainfall in "liters per square meter". It makes me want to scream every time I hear it.

Who in their right mind takes a nice, easy-to-visualize-in-your-head unit like "millimeters" and thinks, "now let's multiply top and bottom by square meters, it'll make much more sense that way!"? 

[Muttley Snickers]

The campaign site declares and illustrates that a bicycle is not necessarily needed, good luck with that crossing one of our deserts down here, a dingo took my bottle.   



 

[Fungus]

Unfortunate choice of graphic. I wonder how many people will end up in position "B" if this thing goes on sale and people believe the writing on the box.

Will the makers be liable?

[matkar]

It seems I made a mistake reading the diagram. The enthalpy units at the upper left side lead me to believe the vertical scale is enthalpy but it's actually temperature.
To correct my mistake I've found a nice Mollier diagram which also covers 40°C @ 90%RH on a hungarian site:
http://host.epget.bme.hu/hu/component/phocadownload/category/110-ag03_vegyiparieljarasokesberendezesek?download=1816:szaritas-oktatasi-segedlet-2015
I drew the process in it and found it takes 104kJ to extract 31,6 grams of water from 1kg of air by cooling the air to 18°C.

If I made a mistake again, someone please correct me.

I haven't investigated but they probably use a heat exchanger in order to precool the intake air using the outlet air to get a higher efficiency. It seems a waste of energy if they didn't do so.

[SydB]

I don't understand why people keep saying Dave is wrong there. The process of condensation is exothermic (it releases energy) equivalent to the heat of vaporization (just opposite sign), which is 2257 kJ/kg. Whatever energy is dumped into the peltier to heat it up will have to be reversed by energy put back into the peltier to cool that side down again.

Perhaps this embodies a fundamental misunderstanding here by some people. Putting energy into any closed system cannot cool it down (unless somewhere in the system heat energy is being converted into another kind of energy e.g. chemical potential energy). There is no such thing as reverse or negative energy (an energy expressed as a negative number just implies energy moving in the opposite direction e.g. exothermic or endothermic). Any electrical energy into a Peltier will need to be dumped as heat as well as the energy released from the phase change of water vapour into liquid as well as the energy taken from anything else that is cooled on the cold side (e.g. nitrogen, oxygen gas in air). Hence rs20's post where an air conditioner has 100J of electrical energy put in, 300J is taken from the 'cool' side and 400J is delivered to the hot side (300+100=400). Conservation of energy must be obeyed (note that we haven't mentioned the fan here). And that is how any cooling system works - it just moves energy around (or converts heat into another form of energy that can be moved away). If it so happens that a phase change of gas/vapour to a liquid occurs because of the cooling, then that just means more energy to move away. Calculating the latent heat of a phase change does NOT fundamentally tell you how much energy you need to make it happen. All it tells you is at least how much energy needs to be removed. That is my point.

[Fungus]

Calculating the latent heat of a phase change does NOT fundamentally tell you how much energy you need to make it happen. All it tells you is at least how much energy needs to be removed. That is my point.

Yep. Dave's calculation isn't correct or complete, but it's enough to prove this bottle will disappoint every single buyer (even the ones who don't die of thirst).

[SydB]

Calculating the latent heat of a phase change does NOT fundamentally tell you how much energy you need to make it happen. All it tells you is at least how much energy needs to be removed. That is my point.

Yep. Dave's calculation isn't correct or complete, but it's enough to prove this bottle will disappoint every single buyer (even the ones who don't die of thirst).

No, it is not enough; it is only the start. What may be enough is to compare the practical efficiencies of dehumidifiers and air conditioners as has been done. However, this does not prove a new invention or discovery of some kind involving energy transfer could not make it work; it is just unlikely.

[Fungus]

Calculating the latent heat of a phase change does NOT fundamentally tell you how much energy you need to make it happen. All it tells you is at least how much energy needs to be removed. That is my point.

Yep. Dave's calculation isn't correct or complete, but it's enough to prove this bottle will disappoint every single buyer (even the ones who don't die of thirst).

No, it is not enough

Yes, it is. It's plenty to prove that that bottle cannot work as claimed.

(and maybe enough to prove that any condensing bottle that relies on a 30cm solar panel cannot work)

[TheAmmoniacal]

Someone please get a small 4x4 cm peltier, run it at 15W with a cooler suspended above a cup and do a timelapse!

[free_electron]

Who knows, maybe the solar cell is 100% 800% efficient  O0

That's more like it.

-gasp- a solar cell with a  batterizer attached to it !

[TheAmmoniacal]

The Solarizer!!  O0

[langwadt]

Someone please get a small 4x4 cm peltier, run it at 15W with a cooler suspended above a cup and do a timelapse!

https://youtu.be/Vss1ke5tTvI

[apis]

Calculating the latent heat of a phase change does NOT fundamentally tell you how much energy you need to make it happen. All it tells you is at least how much energy needs to be removed. That is my point.

Yep. Dave's calculation isn't correct or complete, but it's enough to prove this bottle will disappoint every single buyer (even the ones who don't die of thirst).

No, it is not enough

Yes, it is. It's plenty to prove that that bottle cannot work as claimed.

(and maybe enough to prove that any condensing bottle that relies on a 30cm solar panel cannot work)

Yeah, Dave may have been a bit sloppy with the terminology but is basically correct. If you want to turn water vapor into liquid water then you need as a minimum remove the latent heat somehow. Dave shows very convincingly that you can not even do that with such a tiny solar cell and peltier device in a few hours as they claim. The thing will never produce enough water to be useful.

[EEVblog]

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.

[EEVblog]

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.

[Fungus]

"we'll reveal the data to backers once we get the money"

 

If it works then reveal it now and you'll get more backers!

[TheAmmoniacal]

I'd be more interested in this bottle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LifeSaver_bottle than a Fontus

[Dr. Frank]

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

[EEVblog]

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.

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? 

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.

[Dr. Frank]

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

[SydB]

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.

[Don Hills]

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.

[Fungus]

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...)

[langwadt]

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

[rs20]

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.

[Fungus]

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.

[alter Ratz]

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

[apis]

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.

An then there's this:

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.

[EEVblog]

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?

[jeremybarker]

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.

[SydB]

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.

[rrinker]

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/

[Neilm]

I have just been given a self filling water bottle.

I went to the tap - and filled it myself

[EEVblog]

Oh dear: 
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 

[rrinker]

 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....

[apis]

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.

[rrinker]

 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. 

[Fungus]

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?

[daqq]

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:

[gardner]

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!

[SydB]

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. 

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.

[EEVblog]

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. 

Even many engineers might not sniff a problem with this at first look, they'd have smell a rat in order to dig deeper and research and do the calcs.

[Fungus]

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.

There's nothing wrong with the basic scientific principles of this and it will produce water.

(just not as much as you'd imagine...)

[daqq]

(just not as much as you'd imagine...)

The proper term for this is:

* - Results may vary.

[martinr33]

There's an update. They have partnered with a company that has a material with "cooling conduciveness of more than 30 times copper!".

(heat pipe, maybe)?



I guess they are going to try to fix the problem with a better cooler. Which can't possibly work, as the cooler isn't the problem.

[EEVblog]

Good news!
Dear Supporters,
Thank you for your patience in waiting for this update. We have been waiting several weeks for different suppliers in order to assemble our new wave of prototypes. Apparently the summer here in California is taken more seriously than we thought!

I am in Los Angeles overseeing the technical development and supporting the team that has been tirelessly working on the heart technology of Fontus. They have been able to integrate a new type of material composition that has a cooling conduciveness of more than 30 times copper! (copper being one of the highest conductor materials used in the industry). This combined with our new design for the condenser of the bottle will create condensation substantially better than most of the dehumidifiers we have been deconstructing and analysing in the last months.

We are starting to design the next wave of core technology prototypes together with the suppliers and are eager to see how those perform. In early August we made a strategic decision to partner with the company in charge of technical development enabling us to save large costs and settle a base in LA near to most of our suppliers for better communication. We are already working together with other strategic development partners to help us with the final design modifications, tooling, and start of the manufacturing process.

The staggered development and more specifically, the supply chain management and logistics for the first prototypes have been advancing slower than we expected. We are hoping to make up for the down time after the prototyping phase is over.  Up to now, many decisions we have taken were based on being cost-sensitive in exchange for slightly slower processes.  However, we are not expecting any additional delays from this milestone out, should the schedule be impacted we will advise all of you in follow on updates.

Have a nice week!
Kristof

LOL how they talk about supply chain management and still working on prototypes and materials in the same update 
No data or test results provided of course, because, well, that would be embarrassing.

[JimRemington]

I was daydreaming about sitting in a coffee shop, sipping from my endless glass of Fontus water, while charging my phone with uBeam ultrasonic waves, then it hit me: Hey, what if we power the Fontus with ultrasonic beams so that it works indoors too?

[EEVblog]

Fontus will always be in the same boat as Batteriser and uBeam. Once they ship something then the game will be up on how piss-poor it works and by how many orders of magnitude it doesn't meet it's claims.

[Geonerd]

Good news!
Dear Supporters,
Thank you for your patience in waiting for this update. We have been waiting several weeks for different suppliers in order to assemble our new wave of prototypes. Apparently the summer here in California is taken more seriously than we thought!

I am in Los Angeles overseeing the technical development and supporting the team that has been tirelessly working on the heart technology of Fontus. They have been able to integrate a new type of material composition that has a cooling conduciveness of more than 30 times copper! (copper being one of the highest conductor materials used in the industry). This combined with our new design for the condenser of the bottle will create condensation substantially better than most of the dehumidifiers we have been deconstructing and analysing in the last months.

We are starting to design the next wave of core technology prototypes together with the suppliers and are eager to see how those perform. In early August we made a strategic decision to partner with the company in charge of technical development enabling us to save large costs and settle a base in LA near to most of our suppliers for better communication. We are already working together with other strategic development partners to help us with the final design modifications, tooling, and start of the manufacturing process.

The staggered development and more specifically, the supply chain management and logistics for the first prototypes have been advancing slower than we expected. We are hoping to make up for the down time after the prototyping phase is over.  Up to now, many decisions we have taken were based on being cost-sensitive in exchange for slightly slower processes.  However, we are not expecting any additional delays from this milestone out, should the schedule be impacted we will advise all of you in follow on updates.

Have a nice week!
Kristof

LOL how they talk about supply chain management and still working on prototypes and materials in the same update 
No data or test results provided of course, because, well, that would be embarrassing.

"Relocating to Vienna..."
In other words, it's time to... TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN!!!   

[WattSekunde]

There are some working "fontus - the self filling water bottles" out there... in some way 

https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Shanghai-manufacturer-fontus-the-self-filling_60495056195.html

[Geonerd]

The latest (end of December) weasel statement by Fontus:

Dear supporters!

The end of this controversial year is approaching and looking back, we realize how much has changed in such a short time. We went from a beautiful vision and an innovative product concept to explore the technical depths of what it means to extract water from the air.

Our first approaches taught us that our expectations and design goals were definitely too high. Nevertheless, our high expectations drove us to challenge the seemingly impossible and reach areas never explored before. Thanks to this fact and your support, we are now investing in the research and development of technologies that will someday also help the millions of people around the world suffering of ground water scarcity. Even though we will not reach certain design goals of our project, we are developing highly efficient systems that bring us one big step nearer to creating the first self-filling water bottle in history.

Our new engineering team has been working tirelessly and making good progress. Nevertheless, we will not be able to recover lost time for reasons already explained in our last update and will consequently have a considerable delay.

We put together a short Christmas clip for you about our work in these first two months in our new home in Vienna.

We wish you all a peaceful and inspiring Christmas and a powerful start into the New Year!

Your Fontus Team

 

[EEVblog]

Awarded top startup! 

http://www.futuredesalination.com/b/fontus-chosen-for-as-top-austrian-start-up-2016/

[EEVblog]

The latest (end of December) weasel statement by Fontus:

 
Captured image for the record.
Ignoring the weasel words they have now admitted that that their product didn't actually work, and they will not be delivering. Game over.
But they are still having a fun time doing research with the backers money.

[EEVblog]

New Thunderf00t video:

[TheAmmoniacal]

I wonder how much it would cost them to actually make the bottle in their demo? Of course it wouldn't perform well at condensing water, but at least it would look cool and give the people the product they envisaged!

They obviously have the CAD drawings, so why not just send it to fabs in China?

[madires]

So they've started with a vision of a product, some nice pictures and videos, and without any idea to achieve the promised specs while ignoring thermodynamics. They get prizes and subsidies. They deconstruct and analyze dehumidifiers to learn about the technology. This is a very good example of the Dunning-Kruger effect. And a very sad example of other people ignoring science and believing any marketing nonesense. Were they asleep in physics when they went to school? There's a nice euphemism for this: post-factual.

[EEVblog]

So they've started with a vision of a product, some nice pictures and videos, and without any idea to achieve the promised specs while ignoring thermodynamics.

They actually had early prototypes and actually got water out of them in steamed up bathroom IIRC and they got all excited. And yep, in all the excitement they forgot to do any basic thermodynamics 

They get prizes and subsidies. They deconstruct and analyze dehumidifiers to learn about the technology. This is a very good example of the Dunning-Kruger effect. And a very sad example of other people ignoring science and believing any marketing nonesense. Were they asleep in physics when they went to school? There's a nice euphemism for this: post-factual.

It's sadly all too common these days. Kids are now taught to have these ideas, develop a startup, get funding no matter what, and don't let anyone or anything say it can't be done, because "those people" don't drive innovation like they do
They are also taught never to admit something was never possible, but instead when they failed as the laws of physics and engineering predict had a valuable "learning experience" and contributed greatly to society by their efforts. And you you can see they are taking this vision to the grave.

[Brumby]

[Money4Nothing]

Hey Fontus might not be physically impossible, but it's engineeringly impractical.

One day we might invent nano-tech heat exchangers and super carbon nano-tube bucky-ball solar panels that would make something like Fontus actually work.
But that day ain't today, and it won't be done by some industrial artist on indegogo.

[Brumby]

One day we might invent nano-tech heat exchangers and super carbon nano-tube bucky-ball solar panels that would make something like Fontus actually work.

Even that won't make it work.

There are greater practicalities involved that lie outside the realm of any engineering - like the availability of water vapour and the laws of thermodynamics.

You could have 100% efficiency in every component and still not have a useful product.

[DBecker]

This is why you guys aren't going to rich in the modern Kickstarter/Indigogo world.

You have technical knowledge and ethics.

I think that is a result of a poor career choice.  Most careers you can do things completely wrong, and things aren't obviously broken.  Collect your pay, rinse, repeat. Marketing for instance.  Or teaching.  I've met adults in those fields that couldn't tell you what temperature ice formed at, or the boiling point of water.  Closer to their own work, they can do something completely wrong and never get the feedback of a circuit not working, a resistor turning to smoke or a program that immediately crashes.

[Brumby]

Yes.  We tend to want to add value in what we do - not suck out the value added by others.

[tchandler]

MIT, Device pulls water from dry air, powered only by the sun

Uh oh, next on the chopping block?  http://news.berkeley.edu/2017/04/13/device-pulls-water-from-dry-air-powered-only-by-the-sun/

Claims new material (a metal-organic framework) makes it possible, I don't have access to the journal Science to read the report.   

[Fungus]

MIT, Device pulls water from dry air, powered only by the sun

Uh oh, next on the chopping block?  http://news.berkeley.edu/2017/04/13/device-pulls-water-from-dry-air-powered-only-by-the-sun/

Claims new material (a metal-organic framework) makes it possible, I don't have access to the journal Science to read the report.   

Why the hate? There IS water in the air.

Berkeley aren't claiming to be using a Peltier cooler powered by a tiny solar panel. Their method is (a) completely different, and (b) not electronic so nothing to do with EEVBLOG.

[Hensingler]

MIT, Device pulls water from dry air, powered only by the sun

Uh oh, next on the chopping block?  http://news.berkeley.edu/2017/04/13/device-pulls-water-from-dry-air-powered-only-by-the-sun/

Claims new material (a metal-organic framework) makes it possible, I don't have access to the journal Science to read the report.   

Why the hate? There IS water in the air.

Not in the dry air they are claiming to extract water from, by definition. You would think a university wouldn't be so sloppy with what they publish.

[tchandler]

MIT, Device pulls water from dry air, powered only by the sun

Uh oh, next on the chopping block?  http://news.berkeley.edu/2017/04/13/device-pulls-water-from-dry-air-powered-only-by-the-sun/

Claims new material (a metal-organic framework) makes it possible, I don't have access to the journal Science to read the report.   

Why the hate? There IS water in the air.

Berkeley aren't claiming to be using a Peltier cooler powered by a tiny solar panel. Their method is (a) completely different, and (b) not electronic so nothing to do with EEVBLOG.

No hate, Just something to keep an eye on. The journal Science is reputable and MIT may be on to something. I just don't know
I thought this was thread related since a lot of the discussion is thermodynamic limitations not just electronics. Also I see some sizable wire going to that condenser with a giant heat sink. Clearly they are condensing using Peltier.

The claims are almost 3 liters a day per Kg of MOF, all powered by the sun, but no one mentions how much power from the sun. It seems a little hyped but I could be wrong.

[rocketguy]

Well, I was completely ready to call BS on this, based on this episode but then I realized that this might be new approaches being explored by, you know, actual scientists.  Since I work at Berkeley I'm a bit more confident this is credible.  But figured it would be interesting to see Dave's take on this.  Seems that using a condensation "catalyst" metal organic framework reduces the power requirement significantly. 

And it's not a kickstarter.  So there's that. 

http://news.berkeley.edu/2017/04/13/device-pulls-water-from-dry-air-powered-only-by-the-sun/

[Brumby]

I'm a bit sceptical about a catalyst overcoming a basic issue of thermodynamics.

The only way I could see a catalyst being effective is if it were to take hydrogen out of the atmosphere (whether free H₂ or from organics like methane) and combine with O₂.  That would give you water from "dry air" ... but I would not expect production to be at all significant - assuming such a process was practical.

[BradC]

Seems that using a condensation "catalyst" metal organic framework reduces the power requirement significantly. 

The MOF isn't a "catalyst". It's behaving very much like a low energy desiccant, where water molecules readily adhere in the matrix while it's all nice and cool. During the day the matrix is heated above ambient and the water is driven off, condensing on a plate that *is* at ambient (notice the heat pipes and fin unit at the bottom designed to keep the condenser plate at ambient). There's no "issue of thermodynamics" being "overcome". The key is the MOF being able to absorb and release water with low temperature / humidity gradients. You could do exactly the same thing with Silica Gel, but you'd need far more of it and much greater temperature gradients.

The "new discovery" that makes it practical (such as it is), is in the MOF. The rest of it is fairly basic and simple engineering. No physical laws are being bent or broken.

[EEVblog]

Well, I was completely ready to call BS on this, based on this episode but then I realized that this might be new approaches being explored by, you know, actual scientists.  Since I work at Berkeley I'm a bit more confident this is credible.  But figured it would be interesting to see Dave's take on this.  Seems that using a condensation "catalyst" metal organic framework reduces the power requirement significantly. 

I have zero knowledge in this area.

[josecamoessilva]

Much as I hate to defend IHTFP and UC-Leningrad, a few points to keep in mind:

1. What MIT/UC-B have is a "proof of concept" or a "technology demonstration." They're not claiming to solve the water shortage with a few crowdsourcing drives. This is the science part, engineering hasn't really started yet.

2. To condense 3l/day you only need to dissipate 80W (enthalpy of vaporization = 2.3MJ/liter times 3 liters = 6.9 MJ / 24h*3600s = 80W sustained). This is a far cry from the 11 Gallons/day claimed by the Waterseer. (I computed the power requirements somewhere, I believe ~ 1kW sustained.)

(Edited twice: the Waterseer doesn't use a Peltier device which I wrote originally, I was thinking of another nonsensical device, here: https://twitter.com/josecamoessilva/status/845394633534275584 ; that nonsensical device would need 12kW of sustained power to operate. The bulb of the Waterseer has to dissipate around 1100W by my calculations here: https://twitter.com/josecamoessilva/status/833383393375186944 and that's just for the enthalpy of vaporization, not temperature change.)

3. Seriously people, supporting membership of the AAAS, including digital access to the journal Science, costs $65/yr. That's like the cost of a pack of cigarettes in California now, with all the taxes. The Science News article is here:

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/04/new-solar-powered-device-can-pull-water-straight-desert-air

and the actual paper is here (I'm a member of the AAAS, full member at that so $125 not $65, but if you're not and are too cheap to pony up the $65, most public libraries offer online access free to their patrons, which join free of charge):

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2017/04/12/science.aam8743

4. Of course MIT & UC of the Berks plus publication in Science (peer-reviewed by scientists) isn't a guarantee that the system works as described. BUT it's a pretty big push in the direction of "probably true."

5. The project also underwent peer review at both universities (for annual reviews and funding rounds) and this is peer review by knowledgeable people who really want to trash the research (because of the "your research group's cancelled grant is my research group's new post-doc hire" rule of academic budgeting). Again, no guarantees, but surviving those rounds pushes the confidence farther into the "probably true" area.

Pasta la vista,
JCS

[RGB255_0_0]

TF has said this is his next debunk video.

There could be a lot of back and forth to come.

[Fungus]

I'm a bit sceptical about a catalyst overcoming a basic issue of thermodynamics.

It's not a catalyst - there's no chemical reaction taking place.

The way I read it, this is all about shape and structure. It gives water a place to condense. The sunlight unsticks the atoms from the lattice or something. There's not a lot of real info to work with.

[Hensingler]

(notice the heat pipes and fin unit at the bottom designed to keep the condenser plate at ambient). There's no "issue of thermodynamics" being "overcome".

At 0:58 in the video included in the berkeley release you might notice the large red and black wires connected what is obviously a peltier device.

There are issues of thermodynamics which they overcame with a lot of electricity which to be "powered only by sun" requires a large solar panel they didn't bother mentioning (or likely even use). In the other renewable energy forum thread I already pointed out the ridiculous amount of night time desert air needing pass over 1kg of his MOF to extract the claimed 2.8l of water.

I'm sure his MOF thing works and might be useful but the reporting and claims of it being enabling technology for personal desert water supplies or household local water generation are just BS.

[Kilrah]

Yup there's quite obviously a peltier element to actually condense the water that they carefully omitted. Their thing may "attract" more water vapor but it still has to be condensed, which... is the showstopper for such applications.

[mtdoc]

TF has said this is his next debunk video.

There could be a lot of back and forth to come.

 

TF lost all credibility for me a while back.

The problem with these youtube "debunk" type videos is they become a thing in themselves.  While there's plenty of real scams out there - the youtube views that come from legitimate debunking of solar roadways and batterizer type hyped products becomes too enticing I believe and leads some (like TF) into trying to do "debunking" in areas that they have no real expertise. 

I think the "debunk video product" runs the danger of becoming as much a scam as some of the physical product scams that the early debunk videos took on - sucking in viewers (or buyers) with impressive sounding technical jargon.   But I guess anything to get the youtube views..

[rs20]

Yup there's quite obviously a peltier element to actually condense the water that they carefully omitted. Their thing may "attract" more water vapor but it still has to be condensed, which... is the showstopper for such applications.

Not necessarily, the claim seems to be that solar insolation heats the material up and drives off the water vapour, which is then condensed by the ambient temperature of the radiator. Black thing in sun is hotter than black thing in shade --> heat gradient.

[josecamoessilva]

Quoting myself from another thread:

What's shown on the videos and photos is not a prototype; in some it's the experimental rig they used to measure the properties of 1.8 g of MOF, in some others it's a proof-of-concept device with 1.3 g (that's grams, not kg) of MOF, with a lot of additional instrumentation attached.

Because they wanted to test different temperatures in the experiment, they attached a Peltier effect cooler to the system, just like a plane model inside a wind tunnel has a mount that can change the model's angle of attack and that doesn't mean that real planes need mounts. Given that it shows in some photos, some might assume that Peltier cooling is part of the device (it's not, the paper is very clear on that; the solar energy is used for heating the MOF and releasing the moisture).

[Hensingler]

Quoting myself from another thread:

What's shown on the videos and photos is not a prototype; in some it's the experimental rig they used to measure the properties of 1.8 g of MOF, in some others it's a proof-of-concept device with 1.3 g (that's grams, not kg) of MOF, with a lot of additional instrumentation attached.

Because they wanted to test different temperatures in the experiment, they attached a Peltier effect cooler to the system, just like a plane model inside a wind tunnel has a mount that can change the model's angle of attack and that doesn't mean that real planes need mounts. Given that it shows in some photos, some might assume that Peltier cooling is part of the device (it's not, the paper is very clear on that; the solar energy is used for heating the MOF and releasing the moisture).

And quoting the berkeley article

Device pulls water from dry air, powered only by the sun

BS. Dry air does not contain any water to pull.

with the demonstration this week of a water harvester that uses only ambient sunlight to pull liters of water out of the air each day in conditions as low as 20 percent humidity

So it is a water harvester not even a prototype and it pulls liters of water a day - BS on BS.

The prototype, under conditions of 20-30 percent humidity, was able to pull 2.8 liters (3 quarts) of water from the air over a 12-hour period, using one kilogram (2.2 pounds) of MOF.

More BS there is no such device. The article states the MOF can only hold water 20% of its weight so if it did exist they would have to do 14 solar powered accumulate/release cycles in those 12 hours - BS.

Thanks for letting us know the paywalled publication doesn't support the BS claims in the Science and Berkeley news articles. 

[mtdoc]

(Mods- can this series of posts be moved to one of the threads discussing this Science research article - none of this is about the Fonus)

And quoting the berkeley article

Device pulls water from dry air, powered only by the sun

BS. Dry air does not contain any water to pull.

Yes -from the Berkeley News - which is not even an actual publication - just something put out by UCBerkeley's Office of Communications and Public Affairs (i.e. non-science people). Neither the Science news report nor the the original research journal article BTW) says that.  In any case, so what? Most people would call air with 20% humidity "dry air ". What's your criteria, 0% humidity?

The prototype, under conditions of 20-30 percent humidity, was able to pull 2.8 liters (3 quarts) of water from the air over a 12-hour period, using one kilogram (2.2 pounds) of MOF.

More BS there is no such device. The article states the MOF can only hold water 20% of its weight so if it did exist they would have to do 14 solar powered accumulate/release cycles in those 12 hours - BS.

Again you're taking that from the Berkeley News

Congratulations, you've successfully critiqued the "journalism" put out by a university public relations office.

Thanks for letting us know the paywalled publication doesn't support the BS claims in the Science and Berkeley news articles.

So instead of spending your time (and ours) on journalism criticism, why not either spend the $40 required (special rate) to access the actual research article? (and get an annual subscription to Science).   Or if that's not an option for you, your local library likely has a copy you can access for free.

[mtdoc]

When speaking of dry air in relation to the atmosphere it is commonly understood to be air that feels dry to the skin. Dry desert air is not normally understood to be air with 0% moisture.

Does air with 0% humidity even exist outside of a laboratory?  I don't think so. Therefore the term "dry air" is always relative.

Personally, I think the energetic insistence on dry air as air that contains no moisture at all is nonsensical in the context of a discussion about extracting moisture from air.

Good point.

So much so that my initial inference was that you were trolling the discussion.

  You may be on to something..

[BradC]

So much so that my initial inference was that you were trolling the discussion.

  You may be on to something..

In these circumstances I generally apply Hanlon's razor.

[EEVblog]

TF has said this is his next debunk video.
There could be a lot of back and forth to come.

 

TF lost all credibility for me a while back.
The problem with these youtube "debunk" type videos is they become a thing in themselves.  While there's plenty of real scams out there - the youtube views that come from legitimate debunking of solar roadways and batterizer type hyped products becomes too enticing I believe and leads some (like TF) into trying to do "debunking" in areas that they have no real expertise. 
I think the "debunk video product" runs the danger of becoming as much a scam as some of the physical product scams that the early debunk videos took on - sucking in viewers (or buyers) with impressive sounding technical jargon.   But I guess anything to get the youtube views..

Maybe, I don't know, he possibly enjoys doing them perhaps?

How would a "debunking product" become a scam if it's correct?

You may not like them, or think he's making too many of them etc, but that's no valid reason to disparage the worth of them.

[josecamoessilva]

How would a "debunking product" become a scam if it's correct?

You may not like them, or think he's making too many of them etc, but that's no valid reason to disparage the worth of them.

I really don't want to wade into this swamp, but the problem is that some of them are incorrect and (this is the bad part) TF not only never corrects or acknowledges the problem, he also repeats the errors in subsequent videos.

For example, regarding the Hyperloop

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSPi1JFx4_-Gz0Fm0qq2KUz4c22UbZCco

http://sitacuisses.blogspot.com/2016/07/product-prototype-technology-idea.html

(BTW, I don't like the Hyperloop as proposed: it's a railroad trying to solve a problem that air travel has already solved with additional flexibility. SF-LA would be idiotic. Might be useful in the Boston-NYC-DC corridor given the weather, but even so not competitive with air shuttles.)

TF announced that the MOF was a scam "because thermodynamics" but as I calculated above, we're talking about dissipating 80W, which is totally feasible.

Cheers,
JCS

[mtdoc]

How would a "debunking product" become a scam if it's correct?

Because if the author is not an expert in that particular field, does not present any of their own data, and simply does a lot of sensationalistic hand waving, video graphics and use of technical jargon then it is a product being sold under false pretenses.  Just because it might sound "correct" does not mean it is.  (Your Solar Roadways and Batterizer debunk videos were not like that BTW).

Yes, the Hyperloop video is a prime example. His debunking videos have been debunked by both experts in the relevant field (which he is not) and others (e.g. Jose's blog post re: the process of idea --> product) . He never adequately addressed those criticisms (yes, I know he made more of the same type of sensationalistic videos in response). 

That doesn't mean that the Hyperloop will become reality(I doubt it will) - just that TFs videos on the subject were senstionalistic, ill-informed and IMO little better than the videos by the Solar Roadways proponents. But in his case, the videos are the product he's selling.
 

Yes, a swamp indeed.

[EEVblog]

How would a "debunking product" become a scam if it's correct?

Because if the author is not an expert in that particular field, does not present any of their own data, and simply does a lot of sensationalistic hand waving, video graphics and use of technical jargon then it is a product being sold under false pretenses.  Just because it might sound "correct" does not mean it is.  (Your Solar Roadways and Batterizer debunk videos were not like that BTW).

Err, yeah, that's called making mistakes. People make mistakes in videos all the time.

Yes, the Hyperloop video is a prime example. His debunking videos have been debunked by both experts in the relevant field (which he is not) and others (e.g. Jose's blog post re: the process of idea --> product) . He never adequately addressed those criticisms (yes, I know he made more of the same type of sensationalistic videos in response). 
That doesn't mean that the Hyperloop will become reality(I doubt it will) - just that TFs videos on the subject were senstionalistic, ill-informed and IMO little better than the videos by the Solar Roadways proponents. But in his case, the videos are the product he's selling.

OK, so I looked at the blog post:
http://sitacuisses.blogspot.com.au/2016/07/product-prototype-technology-idea.html
I have not read it all yet, so bare that in mind.
But right off the bat I see a problem here.

TF is attacking the hype and viability of a product idea.
Hyperloop is not saying "Hey, this sounds cool, lets do some research and see where it goes, it might work, it might not, it might have some interesting spin-off's" etc. No, they are selling and marketing the crap out of the completely viable product idea.

Now, you can argue TF got some technical things wrong in the video (I don't know, I haven't double checked), but most of the concerns and showstopper seemed completely founded to me, and that's what he's trying to do, debunk the viability of the product idea. In that he's 100% right.
Would you prefer to live in a world where no one questions product/idea marketing like this? I doubt you would, in which case who else is stepping up to the plate to do it? I think the TF haters should cut him some slack.

You and others are attacking him for not being 100% correct, or this or that detail, or what he didn't say etc. Are you not thankful that someone is saying something? That someone is having a go?
Does he have to be either the pinnacle of debunking greatness or GTFO?
That what these arguments seem like to me.

How has it gone from the person making the product/idea claim having to defend it, to the person doing the rightly questioning of the idea having to defend themselves? It's arse backwards.

If you take the approach in that article then Solar Roadways is a worthy idea to be pursuing.

BTW, IIRC I saw the official(?) response to TF's Hyperloop debunking, and IIRC they just waved their hands around and said "you don't understand" instead of actually proving the technical viability of their concept.

[mtdoc]

Err, yeah, that's called making mistakes. People make mistakes in videos all the time.

And those who are honest acknowledge and correct them. But I'm not talking about making mistakes. I'm talking about selling a product with more hype than substance. Solar Roadways has done this and so has TF IMO.

Hyperloop is not saying "Hey, this sounds cool, lets do some research and see where it goes, it might work, it might not, it might have some interesting spin-off's" etc. No, they are selling and marketing the crap out of the completely viable product idea.

I'm not sure who you are referring to when you say Hyperloop.  Hyperloop is an idea. There are several privately funded companies currently trying to develop the technology. As far as I know none of them are selling a product yet or soliciting money from the general public.

And there are several (at least 24 that I'm aware of) university engineering department teams working on developing the technology. Are you accusing them of "selling and marketing the crap out of" something?

Would you prefer to live in a world where no one questions product/idea marketing like this?

Of course not. That's a straw man.  But serious criticisms of something like this involve either well researched and presented data or at least thoughtful, well reasoned questions and critiques by someone with the qualifications to do that in a believable way. They don't involve youtube videos with titles like "How the Hyperloop can kill you!" or with the word "BUSTED" or "KILLED" splashed across the screen in very large, bright, loud font.

And don't you think that the many engineers, private funders and 24 university engineering teams have questioned and continue to question the Hyperloop idea?

In the end it will be the real physical world that determines whether the companies and university engineering teams are successful and even then, if the technology does prove viable, it will be subject to the realities of politics and high finance. It's not an Indiegogo project.

[EEVblog]

And those who are honest acknowledge and correct them. But I'm not talking about making mistakes. I'm talking about selling a product with more hype than substance. Solar Roadways has done this and so has TF IMO.

Even if that's the case, TF gives lots of useful info and concepts in his videos that are worthwhile in their own right, as tools people can use to start critically evaluating things themselves.
Even the vibe of the videos provides a useful service in helping people think critically about stuff.
Once again, do you want to live in a world were no one is publicly questioning these things and encouraging people to critically thing about claims they see?
What's actually wrong with some debunking hand waving anyway? If it gets people thinking then it has value in itself.

I'm not sure who you are referring to when you say Hyperloop.  Hyperloop is an idea. There are several privately funded companies currently trying to develop the technology. As far as I know none of them are selling a product yet or soliciting money from the general public.

Have you even seen the marketing hype videos? They are ridiculous!

And there are several (at least 24 that I'm aware of) university engineering department teams working on developing the technology. Are you accusing them of "selling and marketing the crap out of" something?

Not unless they have made a public themselves video hyping it.
I don't know where you got the idea I was accusing engineering teams of anything.

And don't you think that the many engineers, private funders and 24 university engineering teams have questioned and continue to question the Hyperloop idea?

Why would funders and people enagaged in development of an idea want to question the entire concept?
They are no doubt just working on something fun, and usually some small aspect of it, more power to them.
I've worked at companies where if you dared criticised the direction the product concept idea then you were either fired or shunned. If you don't think that's not happening here as well then you are a fool.

In the end it will be the real physical world that determines whether the companies and university engineering teams are successful and even then, if the technology does prove viable, it will be subject to the realities of politics and high finance. It's not an Indiegogo project.

What's that got to do with the value of debunking videos?
If I didn't know any better I'd say you were advocating that debunkng videos are worthless unless 100% accurate and thorough on only pure scam related projects.

[mtdoc]

Once again, do you want to live in a world were no one is publicly questioning these things and encouraging people to critically thing about claims they see?

Of course not. Straw man.

What's actually wrong with some debunking hand waving anyway? If it gets people thinking then it has value in itself.

The problem is these hyped debunking videos seem to me to be now doing the opposite. They are legitimizing uninformed, non-critical thinking - leading some people to assume something is bogus just because they don't like the sound of it, it seems implausible to them, it disagrees with their politics, or because their favorite youtube personality did a debunking video on it. (case in point the recent Science article kerfuffle here).

Unless the target of the debunking is chosen carefully, and it is done correctly (your Solar Roadways and Batterizer videos are good examples of this) then it is inherently anti-science IMO.

I don't know where you got the idea I was accusing engineering teams of anything.

They comprise a large percentage of Hyperloop engineers. You did not specify that you were attacking a specific company's or engineer's claims.  Instead, you seemed to be addressing the overall idea of the Hyperloop (as is TF in his videos).

Why would funders and people enagaged in development of an idea want to question the entire concept?
They are no doubt just working on something fun, and usually some small aspect of it, more power to them.

As far as the private investors risking their money, I doubt they are doing that just for fun and if they didn't question the projects they invest in they would be unsuccessful investors. As far as the engineers - I sure hope they think it is fun - but I think that's irrelevant to the point I was making. They are also asking technical questions and working on solving problems. That's what engineers do. It's implausable that only a youtube blogger like TF (and not the hundreds of engineers working on this) is going to ask the relevant questions or see the potential problems.

I've worked at companies where if you dared criticised the direction the product concept idea then you were either fired or shunned. If you don't think that's not happening here as well then you are a fool.

Huh? I don't see the relevance. That kind of thing happens everywhere.

If I didn't know any better I'd say you were advocating that debunkng videos are worthless unless 100% accurate and thorough?

As I've said, I think debunking of a crowdfunded Solar Roadways or Batterizer type scam done in an intelligent, thorough, non-hyped way by someone who has specific expertise relevant to the subject matter (i.e. your videos in those instances) has value and is worthwhile. The debunking meme has strayed from that.

The TF style Hyperloop type debunking videos (lots of hype, high on technical jargon but with relatively little actual science or engineering) attacking a complex multifaceted technological proposal or a peer reviewed research article, done by someone without specific expertise in that field are not only worthless but damaging to the general public's understanding of science and technology IMHO.  YMMV.

[EEVblog]

The TF style Hyperloop type debunking videos (lots of hype, high on technical jargon but with relatively little actual science or engineering) attacking a complex multifaceted technological proposal or a peer reviewed research article, done by someone without specific expertise in that field are not only worthless but damaging to the general public's understanding of science and technology IMHO.  YMMV.

You bet MMV.
How many people are talking the time, energy, risk and abuse to attempt to publicly debunk stuff as we see them on a regular basis?
Me , Thunderf00t, err, umm, I'm struggling now, help me out ....

You certainly don't seem to be encouraging debunking in general.
What value do you think it adds attacking TF like this?

Be critical for sure, correct mistakes etc, but you are basically advocating that TF should basically STFU.
Why?
Why not be more proactive in encouraging debunking and critical thinking instead of trying to shut it down when it doesn't meet your stringent criteria?
Do you not see the potential harm in this approach?
Do you not see the bigger picture here?

[Kilrah]

It just seems like some have moved from "well researched debunking to reestablish facts and scientific accuracy" to "making half-assed debunking videos without proper research just becasue it gets views", which is contraproductive.

[Fungus]

(Mods- can this series of posts be moved to one of the threads discussing this Science research article - none of this is about the Fonus)

And quoting the berkeley article

Device pulls water from dry air, powered only by the sun

BS. Dry air does not contain any water to pull.

Congratulations, you've successfully critiqued the "journalism" put out by a university public relations office.

Came here to say this.

There's no way one of the engineers wrote that article. It's some English student who thinks he's a story teller and wanted it to sound more dramatic.

[EEVblog]

Was it Chris Gammell who said on one of the recent AmpHour episodes that he thought debunking was a waste of HIS time? It was made fairly emphatically and for me it had tremendous cut-through.

Be careful what you wish for, there might be no one left willing to take up the debunking challenge when it's really needed.

FYI, I think debunking content is constantly needed in order to reinforce people's ability to think critically. Giving them the skills, the encouragement, and the constant reminder to do so.
By all means dis the ones you think are fluff pieces done for fun and entertainment, but be very careful wishing that they just stop altogether.
Perhaps I'm alone in being able to see the bigger picture here?

[EEVblog]

Look at the time and energy wasted on the Batteriser or the uBeam.

Look at the countless people who have expressed gratitude for that "wasted energy", as they learned a great deal in the process.

I actually can't believe there is a discussion on whether or not it's worthwhile to debunk false claims. I'm on an engineering forum, right? 

[josecamoessilva]

I actually can't believe there is a discussion on whether or not it's worthwhile to debunk false claims. I'm on an engineering forum, right? 

(Wading deeper and deeper into the swamp, against my better judgment...)

The value of debunking bad claims, or maybe we should use "critically analyzing" as a less charged phrase, as an education tool is indisputable: failure analysis is a basic tool in engineering, critical thinking an essential skill for life.

But we need to separate analysis that's technically correct and intellectually honest from "debunking" that has the same problems as, for example, creationist videos (technically wrong and intellectually dishonest).


As for TF and the Hyperloop,

1. The entire edifice of the debunking is based on TF not knowing a basic principle of physical modeling, the square-cube law; (I and many others posted that problem as a comment to the very first video about the Hyperloop; it's also in Shane Killian's first video). The vacuum demo he made with a ball bearing is precisely the type of error that 1st year mechanical engineers are taught to avoid when using physical models.

2. TF's Hyperloop failure mode analyses are wrong because he doesn't seem to know basic compressible fluid mechanics, particular how choked flow works. I can't recall most of the math, it's been decades after all, but the basic principles stuck and therefore I grokked TFs videos were wrong; others have done the math and offered to help, only to be ignored. Or dogpiled by TF's "followers." (Followers as in people who respond to math with "get lost loser, TF rulz.")

3. TF's 'argument from personal incredulity' approach is the same intellectual argument as a creationist's "the eye could never have evolved because it's so complex."  It's particularly bad because TF raises problems as unsolvable that have trivial, well-established engineering solutions. (Again, I and many others pointed that out in comments to the videos.)

4. TF uses specious comparisons, like a recent one between the energy necessary to lower the pressure in the tube, 200 MJ, with 50 kg of TNT, to create the impression that the energy is somehow "explosive," instead of 56 kWh of electrical energy (ok, more because of pump efficiency < 100%) or ~5 liters of jet fuel. This is at the level of the creationists' "hurricane in a junkyard" comparison.

I could go on, but the quicksand level is reaching my chest.

[Fungus]

I'm on a hyperloop team.   

[mtdoc]

How many people are talking the time, energy, risk and abuse to attempt to publicly debunk stuff as we see them on a regular basis?
Me , Thunderf00t, err, umm, I'm struggling now, help me out ....

Yes, and that's what concerns me. I hate to see you associated with TF. I respect you and appreciated your early debunk videos. The majority of your forum members are technically sophisticated. I'd hate to see your video's (and fan base) evolve in the direction of the Thunderf00ts - with his style of hyped, intellectually sloppy "BUSTED" videos - and the group think that accompanies them (as Jose so eloquently describes re the Hyperloop videos).   They are counterproductive to the goal of promoting science and are more akin to the numerous anti-science videos out there.

I hope you'll stick to critically analyzing in a careful, non-hyped manner. That you'll stick to your area of expertise (electronics) and to carefully selected crowd-funded type marketing scams or hyped consumer products. Just my 2 cents.

[majorfx]

I've just read the first critical article of an austrian newspaper on Fontus....  :
https://derstandard.at/2000057185581/Selbstfuellende-Wasserflasche-Vorwuerfe-gegen-Wiener-Start-Up
they even link Daves video 
interresting notes about the government funding:
the responsible government agency
- does not disclose how much money they gave them
- states that, for this type of funding, technological feasibility and a plausible business model are NOT required
  

[EEVblog]

I'm on a hyperloop team.   

Have fun and milk the funding money whilst it lasts.

[Fungus]

I'm on a hyperloop team.   

Have fun and milk the funding money whilst it lasts.

That's the plan.

(although there's not much funding money here in Spain)

[martinr33]

They are back.

http://www.fontus.at/fontus-update.pdf

The claims seem plausible. The panels look more like the panels that Dave showed in his video. That is, huge. 200W of power seems like the new sweet spot.

[Kilrah]

Nice, numbers indeed check out this time.

Which obviously confirms the original concept is unrealistic - unsurprisingly they're now trying to silently shift their marketing towards different purposes.

[EEVblog]

They are back.
http://www.fontus.at/fontus-update.pdf
The claims seem plausible. The panels look more like the panels that Dave showed in his video. That is, huge. 200W of power seems like the new sweet spot.

And even then you need ideal humidity conditions and optimal solar angle.
They are pathetically trying to salvage the idea. What they have no is nothing more than a traditional peltier based de-humidifer in a fancy bottle 

[spiemel]

Since they have tried to move the numbers into the (somewhat) more realistic thermodynamic range, over at the Metabunk forum (not trying to pitch another forum here btw) we started looking at the engineering side of the bottle. There are still significant challenges to the bottle to function even if they can hit the thermodynamic maximums. The issues I noted were some that Thunderf00t also noted:

1) power for 200W mains option of the bottle. Cannot be build into the bottle since 200W power brick is huge size
2) they claim the bottle is 40% smaller, but if you add the size of the folded solar mat, the volume compared to the old bottle/mat combo significantly increased. So it will take up more space in your backpack while hiking.
3) Weight likely increased 600% compared to old design. So you are carrying much more weight now on your hike as opposed to original design.
4) Unlikely they can ever incorporate an air filter (due to need to fully enclose the cold side of Peltier) and the fan/engine needed to pull air through HEPA-like filter
5) High likelihood of critical device failure due to inability to prevent backflow from water collected toward the electronics parts of the Peltier/fan assembly or otherwise to the Air filter, especially since that thing is top heavy
6) powerconfiguration where the power has to be transported from the power input at the bottom to all the power-consuming elements located in the top part (through a flatcable as they currently envisioned, that detaches at the bottle head and somehow has to perfectly align when screwing the electronics top part onto the water container part.

These points aren't nitpicking, these are real items that they need to take into consideration when going from prototype towards mass production and how it affects the functionality of a device for the consumer.

We haven't even mentioned that it is blatant false advertisement/bait&switch if they are now peddling a device 10x less efficient in producing water, while being heavier, bigger and won't work unless you leave it attached to a solar mat for 12hours in a stationary spot to obtain that single 1L of water per day. That is a big difference from collecting 0.8L of water in an hour, while hiking and having that 1sqft solar mat on the back of your backpack en being on the go.

[orion242]

Along the same lines as this water bottle.

http://skyh2oinc.com/products-2/

Note their outdoor conditions needed to meet their rated capacity and where they think the market is.

[JimRemington]

Last update, May 8, 2018: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/fontus-the-self-filling-water-bottles-camping-sports#/updates/all

$345K makes for a nice little travel advance!

Videos have been removed from the primary scam page but the latest come-on video is here, showing the device plugged into the wall (no "in action" shots): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8TlLTFOZmg&feature=youtu.be

[MT]

Hello swamp people i want to join, no idea why but just read Fontus, WATER out of light and thought, you can get money for that!?

[EEVblog]

New TF video: