| General > General Technical Chat |
| Spanish engineers extract drinking water from thin air |
| << < (3/5) > >> |
| SeanB:
Yes, but in the Namib desert you are going to have much better results simply using a fog collector, which requires absolutely no power to operate, as it relies on the cold of night to condense the fog in the air onto fine mesh cloth spread out to get maximum wind area, and this then wicks down to the bottom where it is collected in open troughs that lead to a collector cistern, giving a reliable source of water. Not too effective away from the coast and the moisture laden air off the ocean, but enough to make it usable. The condensing from the air does not work though where you have low humidity, like in almost every other desert, where the humidity in the air is very low to begin with, and thus no matter how good your refrigeration circuit is, you have very little to start with in the first place, and thus need o cool massive amounts of air, to get a small amount of water out. |
| Miyuki:
Another inverter inventing Perpetuum mobile |O ::) |
| coppice:
Dehumidifiers don't really produce drinking water. They extract water so slowly its biologically really iffy by the time you have a pot full. It would need sterilising. Is is low in minerals, though. We used to use it for things like our clothes iron, to avoid lime scale build up. Who are these people in places with no water but lots of energy? Is this a secret marketing campaign for solar panel and heat pump makers? |
| Sal Ammoniac:
--- Quote from: coppice on August 06, 2021, 04:11:40 pm ---Dehumidifiers don't really produce drinking water. They extract water so slowly its biologically really iffy by the time you have a pot full. It would need sterilising. Is is low in minerals, though. We used to use it for things like our clothes iron, to avoid lime scale build up. Who are these people in places with no water but lots of energy? Is this a secret marketing campaign for solar panel and heat pump makers? --- End quote --- How do you define slowly? The dehumidifier in my laundry room generates about two gallons a water in a few hours in the winter (the only time of year that I need to use it). The water it generates is very pure and doesn't need sterilization to drink (I know because I cultured the water and bacterial counts were lower than the control (tap water)). I wouldn't consider this method to be a viable source of drinking water because it uses a lot of electricity to generate the water it does. Perhaps we need vaporators like the one Luke Skywalker used to maintain: |
| coppice:
--- Quote from: Sal Ammoniac on August 06, 2021, 04:30:53 pm --- --- Quote from: coppice on August 06, 2021, 04:11:40 pm ---Dehumidifiers don't really produce drinking water. They extract water so slowly its biologically really iffy by the time you have a pot full. It would need sterilising. Is is low in minerals, though. We used to use it for things like our clothes iron, to avoid lime scale build up. Who are these people in places with no water but lots of energy? Is this a secret marketing campaign for solar panel and heat pump makers? --- End quote --- How do you define slowly? The dehumidifier in my laundry room generates about two gallons a water in a few hours in the winter (the only time of year that I need to use it). The water it generates is very pure and doesn't need sterilization to drink (I know because I cultured the water and bacterial counts were lower than the control (tap water)). --- End quote --- We used to take 20 or 30 litres a day out of the air in our old apartment, and that continued every day for most of the year. When we washed clothes the water went up by however much was in the clothes. So, there was quite a lot of water available. However, that's in a place where anything below 90% RH is a dry day. Most places use as much electricity to extract maybe a glass or two a day. Unless you are really strict about cleaning everything out every couple of glassfuls things get biologically nasty quite quickly. The dust build up in the water can be quite rapid, giving excellent sites for biology to get a foothold. If they have a system with an automated cleaning system maybe it would be OK. Dehumidifiers I've used need a lot of work if you care about the quality of the extracted water. |
| Navigation |
| Message Index |
| Next page |
| Previous page |