Frank Herbert's Moisture Traps May Be a Reality 226
Omomyid writes "In the seminal science fiction book 'Dune,' Frank Herbert envisioned the Fremen collecting water from the air via moisture traps and dew collectors. Science Daily reprints a press release from the Fraunhofer Institute in Stuttgart, where scientists working with colleagues from Logos Innovationen have developed a closed-loop and self-sustaining method, no external power required, for teasing the humidity out of desert air and into potable water."
Re:Still suits next? (Score:4, Interesting)
Bet the Fremen didn't have to deal with patents (Score:3, Interesting)
So in a decade when these are ubiquitous and most of the world is a desert, suddenly the Fraunhofer Institute will announce they had a patent on this and anyone drinking the water will have to pay licensing fees. [wikipedia.org]
Great, just... great.
Re:Still suits next? (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think they'll be down to the level of a still suit for quite a few years yet. Equipment like the urine/water recycling system on the space station or the article's desert "dehumidifier" are bulky.
Plus we just don't have any real economic incentive for creating still suits -- we don't have a lot of people who want to live in the deep deserts.
Re:Still suits next? (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you know why it's illegal to collect rainwater in a barrel in Utah and Colorado?
If there is only a gallon of water in the air over an acre of land, removing a quart does in fact change the balance of things.
Re:And this is news how? (Score:4, Interesting)
We'll be needing this soon enough (Score:3, Interesting)
Here in California our snow packs are dwindling year after year, which means our valleys are likely to revert to their natural desert climate. That's where a full third of our nation's food comes from. We might want to consider some windtraps, not growing rice in a desert, or maybe borrow some Australian expertise to do something cool [youtube.com].
active vs passive (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with this design is it requires electricity, which means expensive solar cells and periodic maintenance to clean them off.
The moisture traps mentioned in Dune already do exist, and are entirely passive. You need an underground chamber with a few vents in the sides, and vent in the top with a chimney. The air rises in the chimney creating a constant flow of air into the chamber, and moisture condenses due to the cooler conditions in the chamber than outside.
Great. Victoria might need this, soon (Score:4, Interesting)
I live in southeastern Australia, and down here, we haven't had regular rainfall now since 1995. Melbourne's water reserves are currently sitting at around 25%. The government's been talking about dredging the Yarra, the city's river, and that is only about a third of peak level at the moment as it is.
This tells me that the long term trend for Victoria is desertification. Queensland is getting floods these days, while we get barely a drop. Unless we're planning on abandoning the entire state, we're going to need technologies exactly like these, in order to be able to continue to live here.
And it's not even an ammonia aborption cycle! (Score:4, Interesting)
When I read this article I was expecting to see another machine based on the ammonia absorption cycle. I was pleasantly surprised to see something new. This is interesting and should be followed to see if it becomes reality.
It's been possible to build an air-water condenser using the ammonia absorption cycle since the 1800s. Blow air across the cold outer surface and the heat exchange causes condensation. A gentleman proposed "oasis machines" which would be a condenser hidden in a decorative pool / fountain from which local villagers could draw water. It was self contained and needed no outside electricity, perhaps solar. He proposed it as a solution to providing water to villagers in Africa, etc. A poster above did mention the problem of the water lacking in mineral nutrients.
Re:In the seminal science fiction book 'Dune (Score:5, Interesting)
There was a lovely old story by Issac Asimov - can't remember the name, sorry, and any search of his work will be a long walk - that told of the author of Genesis trying to write about the Big Bang in terms of particle physics. His son chastised him over the amount of writing materials that would take. At the end of the dialogue it was oversimplified to "(sigh) In the beginning..."
Fantasy is a good way to simplify scientific concepts, provided the fantasy actually tracks the science. If there's no believability, it doesn't make a very good story.
The line between SF and Fantasy has always been a little blurry (nowhere near as blurry as in Chalker's "Masters of Flux and Anchor" series which was a brilliant expansion on Clarke's Law, and a very good read if you can ignore the implicit mysogny in most of his works).
I've worried that Clarke's Law is taken as transitive by some (thank The Pasta for predictable and reproduceable results). I've also thought that we're on a trend to realisation of C.P.Snow's great cultural divide between the knowledge "haves" and "have-nots". I see this among friends who firmly believe that technology comes from observing certain rituals, rather than scientific advancement and engineering process. They're very Cargo Cult and not a little bit frightening.
The truly frightening thing is I have difficulty explaining the difference to them. The gulf is almost too deep to cross now.
Re:And this is news how? (Score:5, Interesting)
If you haven't been eating or drinking anything terribly bad, using pee shouldn't be too bad, but be a bit selective with the vegetation - skip it if it's got the usual "Nature's warning colours" all over it, or smells funny.
Various other alcohols (including nasty ones) have boiling points not far below that of water.
No, more like this... (Score:5, Interesting)
A large pile of rocks will do the same thing, pretty much.
http://www.european-pyramids.eu/wb/pages/european-pyramids/greece.php [european-pyramids.eu]
Same end effect, with no tech. Much cheaper, I'd bet. :)
Re:In the seminal science fiction book 'Dune (Score:3, Interesting)
Quite a lot... (Score:4, Interesting)
The caretaker of my building in Cairo directs the water that condenses in all of the air-conditioner units in the building into the gardens. While it isn't energy efficient AT ALL, I am always surprised by how much water gets to the garden. And as the weather gets hotter, the residents use their air-con more meaning more water for the garden. Again, it's not energy efficient in any way, but it does save water by reclaiming it from the air, and quite a lot of it.
Re:Skywalker's Uncle? (Score:2, Interesting)
I was wondering who else would remember that. The best line is when uncle Owen says: "But harvest time is when I need you the most." Harvest time? On a moisture farm? Not sure how that works ... Is it during the "rainy" season when the humidity is .1 as opposed to 0.01.
Will Luke ever get those power converters? ... the world may never know.
Herbert didn't think up that tech, he witnessed it (Score:3, Interesting)
Frank Herbert, while speaking in a radio interview on a call-in show around 1984, said that he saw a pilot project of a desert moisture collector while he was doing research as a journalist back in the Sixties.
Re:Quite a lot... (Score:3, Interesting)
Humidity is relative. A desert can have much more moisture in the air than a much colder, much more humid area. It's just that, at 50C degrees, the air can hold much more water than it can at 10C degrees. So the same amount of water that makes the desert 15% relative humidity, can result in rain (100% relative humidity) in colder climate.
It's the same thing that allows far more sugar/salt/jello/etc. to dissolve in warm water than cold...