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

Posted by $ nickursis 7 years, 1 month ago to Technology
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Now this is very interesting and Gault like. About time genius appears...


All Comments

  • Posted by Rudde 7 years ago in reply to this comment.
    I already assumed 100% efficiency in my estimations. It doesn't change the amount of air the device would have to deal with.
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  • Posted by $ 7 years ago in reply to this comment.
    I suggest you go read the paper, which can be a little hard as it is depending on understanding MOF's (which I can see the concept, just not sure of the workings). It is pretty well laid out, they do justify their claim of how it works, and the low power needed, but the conditions do vary and control the total amounts yielded.

    http://science.sciencemag.org/content...
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  • Posted by Rudde 7 years ago
    This is just a boring old dehumidifier, not powered by the sun, not very efficient at extracting any mentionable quantities of water from the air.

    So the device will not work on dry air as the title state, their example is from 20-30% air humidity. They claim 2.8l in 12 hrs, assuming 30% humidity and I will assume 30°C since nothing else is stated and lower is worse. They would need to extract 100% of the water from 311 cubic meters of air assuming 100% efficiency, and this in 12 hrs. I know for a fact this is not possible by the device in the picture, and they do not say how much energy it used doing this. If we had just too much energy we could simply convert salt water to fresh water way more efficiently then this device would be able to extract fresh water from air, we don't do that today because it's inefficient.
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  • Posted by starbird56 7 years ago
    But -- but -- no environmental impact study has been performed! It will add to global warming by changing the climate! What about the effect on local wildlife? It will require a state and a federal tax to maintain this elitist water grab that in no way benefits those too poor to buy one for themselves! ad nauseam
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  • Posted by Donald-Brian-Lehoux 7 years ago in reply to this comment.
    borrowed large parts of the story of 'A New Hope' from Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress (1958).?? out right stole it. I have seen other stuff and now I am going to have to start writing it down. I guess as long as it is really old anyone can steal it. I did read a couple years ago that ANYTHING that can be written, sung or used for entertainment has already be done.
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  • Posted by $ 7 years ago in reply to this comment.
    Cool, just illustrates where there is a need, and a producer, something happens...if only more of the world worked that way..Nice little item, I don't fish, but I can see the use of it, I have trouble with little screws and things in electronics...
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  • Posted by NealS 7 years ago
    Fantastic, but at this stage in my life I'm really more impressed with this little device. If you're into fishing, you might want to take a look, especially if you can't see very good, have shaky hands, or any of the other issues that come along with age. I bought 30 of them (wholesale @ Qty of 10) for all my friends that fish.
    https://tyepro.com/
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  • Posted by $ 7 years ago in reply to this comment.
    So, the bottle thing is based on a construct with a limited power supply available, and promises made of performance.

    These guys are making a claim of a physical performance of a specific material, adn said they had confirmed the performance in testing, they also say:

    This proof of concept harvester leaves much room for improvement, Yaghi said. The current MOF can absorb only 20 percent of its weight in water, but other MOF materials could possibly absorb 40 percent or more. The material can also be tweaked to be more effective at higher or lower humidity levels."

    The water is being released by the materiel, then condensed, the condensation being done at ambient, which would certainly limit performance.

    Just remember, in the 20 years before the Wright Brothers, numerous "scientists" and "experts" debunked and pilloried the idea of flight. It took a fundamental breakthrough in the application of power to weight (their little engine) plus an efficient wing design, to get the Wright Flyer off the ground.

    The fundamental science is the hard part, the rest is just engineering.
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  • Posted by $ 7 years ago in reply to this comment.
    Yes, as it is currently configured, but SoKal does have most of that. Tweaked and refined, they might provide independent sources in 10-20 years.
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  • Posted by $ 7 years ago in reply to this comment.
    Ah, but just as Intel starts with 1 good transistor in a new process, then experiments, tweaks and adds new minor discoveries to get a functional die, then you tweak and experiment more to get 10's of good die, then you do more and get 80% of the die on a wafer. It is an iterative process, the killer is that first transistor. They will tweak it, and have verified the basic concept works, the rest is just engineering.
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  • Posted by TheRealBill 7 years ago in reply to this comment.
    Hah that video was the first thing I thought of when I read the storyline. Came here to make sure it was the same thing, but you beat me to it. ;)
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  • Posted by STEVEDUNN46 7 years ago
    Been around for years. A rv refrigerator modified to use concentrated solar to heat the ammonia.
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  • Posted by jsw225 7 years ago in reply to this comment.
    Oh, I have no doubt that they successfully tested it. But they left out several important things like Weather, Temperature, and Power Expended to hit 2.8 liters...
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  • Posted by jsw225 7 years ago in reply to this comment.
    See here for information on the engineering behind what's happening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPvXn...

    Total amount of water in the air is based on Temperature. 20% relative humidity at freezing temperatures contains 1/8th the amount of water 20% relative humidity does at 100 degrees (F). For 2.8 liters of water at room temperature, the system would need to filter 50X shipping containers of air at normal efficiencies to achieve this. And to power this in the time claimed, you'd basically need 15 square meters of solar panels to do it. And that's assuming everything is perfect (perfect sunlight, perfect weather...).

    There's no such thing as a free lunch...
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  • Posted by Joseph23006 7 years ago
    Combine this with the electrostatic motor using atmospheric pressure and the possibilities are limitless.
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  • Posted by Dobrien 7 years ago in reply to this comment.
    "Not likely" Please explain your reasoning.
    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, a level common in arid areas.
    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.
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  • Posted by Dobrien 7 years ago in reply to this comment.
    Yes so many benefits to humanity......access to clean water out of thin air solar powered. .
    Tremendous
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