Canned Water Made From Air and Sunlight To Hit US Stores in September (newscientist.com) 101
Canned water distilled from the air will be available to buy in the US later this year, in an effort to promote solar-powered "hydropanels" that provide an off-grid method of producing drinking water. New Scientist adds: The panels, created by Arizona-based firm Source, use solar energy to power fans, which draw water vapour from the air. A water-absorbing substance, known as a desiccant, traps the moisture, before solar energy from the panel releases the moisture into a collection area within the panel. The distilled water is then sent to a pressurised tank, where the pH is tweaked and minerals like calcium and magnesium are added.
Each panel can produce up to 3 litres of drinking water water a day, about the average daily intake for one person. The process works effectively even in hot, arid conditions such as Arizona, says Friesen. Source, which launched in 2014 as Zero Mass Water, already has hydropanels installed in 56 countries around the world. The panels can be installed as ground arrays, or on rooftops, linked into a building's drinking water pipes. Many sites serve off-grid communities without easy access to potable water, says Friesen. Most of the panels, which retail at almost $3000 apiece, are purchased by governments or development banks, although households can also install panels privately.
Each panel can produce up to 3 litres of drinking water water a day, about the average daily intake for one person. The process works effectively even in hot, arid conditions such as Arizona, says Friesen. Source, which launched in 2014 as Zero Mass Water, already has hydropanels installed in 56 countries around the world. The panels can be installed as ground arrays, or on rooftops, linked into a building's drinking water pipes. Many sites serve off-grid communities without easy access to potable water, says Friesen. Most of the panels, which retail at almost $3000 apiece, are purchased by governments or development banks, although households can also install panels privately.
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But is that actually 'distilled' water? (Score:3)
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Condensate water is neither filtered or distilled.
Think about the condensate pan on an old air conditioner.
All the droplets condense normally, around particles (dirt) in the air.
Are YOU willing to drink that?
https://hvac-talk.com/vbb/thre... [hvac-talk.com]
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If only there was some way to filter water after it's been collected.
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You should come up with a way to filter water and sell it to the nice folks at Source.
Re:But is that actually 'distilled' water? (Score:5, Informative)
Distillation is evaporating something to for vapour, then recondensing it. They're condensing water so it's distilled. There's nothing else in the air that would condense at any reasonable temperature, so that's going to be 100% water. It might pick up some dust or something if they don't filter the air well, but that's the same stuff you're breathing anyway.
Re: But is that actually 'distilled' water? (Score:1)
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Your exhalation and sweat get evaporated into the air, would you like to condense and drink that?
I'll try to find that companys website and see if there's a more detailed description of their process, see if that clarifies things.
For what it's worth I guess if you live somewhere where there's little or no water from other sources this is better than nothing, but that doesn't mean
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Your exhalation and sweat get evaporated into the air, would you like to condense and drink that?
I feel like you don't understand how distillation works. Yes if you evaporate sweat or air, or even your piss and shit, and condense it, it will still be far more pure water than whatever you think you're drinking now.
Re:But is that actually 'distilled' water? (Score:4, Insightful)
Naw.. this is a good way to catch Legionnaire's disease.
Adding enough energy to create water vapor doesn't guarantee the vapor will be pure.
Condensers for the distillation process tend to accumulate dust and bacteria in areas where you are collecting which can contaminate water. Unless you sanitize the collection area continually or sterilize the water after the distillation process through other means - it can get to be quite unsafe.
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Who said the condensation is uncontrolled.
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Dust is also a potential issue, as water vapour likes to condense on whatever small particles are around. 1 L of water means about 1 m3 of vapour, and that's assuming 100% RH. So if you imagine condensing 1 m3 of humid air into 1 L of water, you'll also be concentrating dust by the same factor of 1000.
While the device doesn't rely on dust to condense the water, this could still be an issue as aerosolized particles might want to stick to moist surfaces. Also, if you compare the volume of air you breathe t
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It's actually even worse than a factor of 1000. The vapor pressure of water is 4.2 kpa at 30 degrees C. Air pressure is 31.5 kpa, so the water can only make up 13% of the air. But assuming 50% RH, you'd need to process 15000 liters of air to get a liter of water.
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Air pressure is 31.5 kpa
Are you living on top of Mt.Everest? At sea level air pressure is 101kPa, so 100%RH air at 30C is about 4% water(by partial pressure). And I don't think even 50%RH is that common in AZ, I'd guess 10% is about average.
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Thanks for the correction. I'm not used to doing this type of calculation and I suspected I'd get something wrong.
As for the RH, I find it useful to be less optimistic as far as assuming numbers that help make my point. And this water was surely not bottled in somewhere with low RH due to cost, so the 50% estimate stands.
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Your exhalation and sweat get evaporated into the air, would you like to condense and drink that?
It would be distilled, so, sure. Actually, the water you drink has been cycled through many animal bodies, and not just as exhalation or sweat.
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Where do you think the water you drink comes from? I hate to tell you, but there's likely some of Napoleon's pee in every glass. And his horse's.
Sweat doesn't get "evaporated into the air." The water in sweat does, most of the rest of the stuff stays on your skin. Have you never sweated enough in your life to feel the crusty? There are probably some VOCs that also evaporate, but they won't condense at the same temperature the water does. That's how distillation works: you evaporate a bunch of stuff and use
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If only there was some way to, I dunno, like maybe filter the water after it's been collected.
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You're literally describing the water cycle. Every single drop of water you have ever consumed was once in something's urine, feces, or other excrement. That's just how water works.
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Just because I'm breathing it doesn't necessarily mean I want to pay for a canned version of that or that I want to drink that.
Do you realise that when you drink any water there is a chance that some of the molecules will have been in Hitler's piss at some time?
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It will pick up anything that is soluble in water, such as for example SO_2.
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Which is also picked up when this process is run by nature to produce the water you normally drink. Except that the water, after it condenses, falls a few thousand feet through atmosphere, then typically runs over the land for potentially thousands of kilometres.
You're not going to get any more SO2 or anything else than you would if you put a glass of water on the counter in front of a fan.
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It's farmed. The people who collect it are moisture farmers. And the extra stuff condensed from the air is what gives blue milk it's extra goodness.
canned water (Score:2)
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aka dehydrated water. Who wants to bet you can buy this with your EBT card?
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Dehydrated water is a thing; it's only unfamiliar because we buy it after the water has been added.
When you buy a major brand of bottled water, if it's not spring water, it comes from local tap water. The bottling company uses reverse osmosis to remove the minerals which give local tap water its peculiar local flavor, resulting in a purified but insipid tasting water. They then add a standardized mineral mixture to that insipid water to yield a bottle of drinking water that tastes the same no matter wher
Scam (Score:3)
This is just some sort of scam to promote a consumer product (canned water).
You can already buy commercial dehumidifiers that can collect far more than three liters per day. Also, beware marketing copy that makes it sound like a machine "makes water out of thin air." That's not how that works.
Re:Scam (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, but does your idea have an interdisciplinary team of social scientists, business students, artists, communications majors that never finished their degrees, an electrical engineer that believes bigfoot is real and is the host of the joe rogan podcost, and a yoga instructor that was part of that cult that borrowed the name of an antacid?
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an electrical engineer that believes bigfoot is real and is the host of the joe rogan podcost,
What do you have against bigfoot? ;)
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Bigfoot is real, but he would never stoop so low to start a podcast or even be a guest on Rogan.
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Bigfoot is real, but he would never stoop so low to start a podcast or even be a guest on Rogan.
On the contrary. Bigfoot wanted to be on Rogan, but Rogan declined due to feeling intellectually superior to Bigfoot and him only liking having guests that make him feel intellectually inferior. It was quite the conundrum for Joe, seeing the opportunity to break the big guy out into the spotlight, but he has his line in the sand. No guests that are lower on the intelligence ladder than himself. It's fortunate that that leaves most of humanity available, but the great apes and Bigfoot are right out.
Re: Scam (Score:2)
No, but the guy who takes out the trash swears his brother-in-law's uncle's college roommate was one of the lizard people.
Re:Scam (Score:5, Insightful)
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"Yes, you can buy commercial dehumidifiers that collect more than 3 liters per day. But, in case you haven't noticed, those all have to be connected to mains power. These are SOLAR powered and so don't require access to electricity... That's the BIG difference."
So this is a dehumidifier with a solar array. Again... hardly a *hreakthrough* is it? In fact good old Thunderf00t will likely make a video poking fun at the folly of such things, since he's already debunked a bunch of offerings with exactly the sa
Re:Scam (Score:4, Interesting)
There have been some kind of interesting advances in water extraction from air recently, this may not be a dehumidifier as we typically know them. There are devices now that use membranes rather than cool surfaces.
MIT made one that uses temperature differentials between day and night, mixed with some exotic metal lattice.
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It depends on what your criteria for a breakthrough are. If your criteria is doing something that was not physically possible before, then sure, it's not a breakthrough. But a thing can be a breakthrough because it makes a laboratory of benchtop process economical to do at a useful or industrial scale.
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yeah, but can you buy one that's powered by an integrated solar panel of reasonable size and still puts out 3 liters? I suspect the main market for this is not places that are connected to the grid.
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OK, and how many people can be served with 3L of potable water per day? (And that's assuming maximum output.) Think about it. How many glasses of water are in a liter?
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Like the summary says, approximately 1
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Like the summary says, approximately 1
No, the summary says that 3 liters is "about the average daily intake for one person," which sounds a bit high to me. There are roughly 13 8oz glasses of water in 3 liters.
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I buy water in 6 litre bottles and one bottle lasts me a week or more. However, I only use that water for cold drinks. 3 litres per day sounds reasonable if it also includes water used for cooking, and low if it also includes water used for washing the dishes.
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I buy water in 6 litre bottles and one bottle lasts me a week or more. However, I only use that water for cold drinks. 3 litres per day sounds reasonable if it also includes water used for cooking, and low if it also includes water used for washing the dishes.
I interpreted "intake" of water to mean "take in", as in "drink". By that interpretation, you don't "intake" the water you use to cook pasta, for example (well, I guess you could if you like), and you certainly don't "intake" water used to wash dishes. Or shower, or flush the toilet, or water your yard.
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You can already buy commercial dehumidifiers that can collect far more than three liters per day.
mine routinely does, but i really would never drink that, unless really desperate (*1). if you stuff it in a can, put a colorful label on it, make an ad and put a hefty price on it, people in colorado might, apparently.
*1 funny, there's a spanish saying that goes "nunca digas de esta agua no beberé", literally "never say you wouldn't drink from this water".
Famous Last Words (Score:5, Funny)
What I really need is a droid that understands the binary language of moisture vaporators.
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Quit monkeyin' around with that damned landspeeder? Did you clean your room?
Already taking my tax money (Score:1)
Not going to give them more at retail.
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Re: Already taking my tax money (Score:1)
Seriously? Damn. No wonder things are the way they are.
"Most of the panels, which retail at almost $3000 apiece, are purchased by governments"
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governments ... plural. As in not just your government but other governments as well. As well as communities such as the Navajo nation.
$3k seems like a small purchase compared to a fighter jet or an aircraft carrier. I don't know if the US Army has ordered any hydropanels, I suspect the performance isn't high enough to be useful. But if it were that might be very interesting for the Army's military supply logistics at forward bases. Clean water is a huge deal for the military. The smaller amounts of clean w
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There's also assorted parks not connected to water mains, although I think a well would be a better option than the necessary number of panels.
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That's a good point. Although a well can cost $20K-$50K to drill, depending how deep you need to go. Maybe for a low and infrequent use these panels could work out cheaper. But for high use I can't imagine anything beating a well on price.
Of course a well isn't always an option at some locations. If you're somewhere such as the Sierra Nevada, where there's not much under you except granite and no aquifer underneath. Then the choices are: seasonal streams (what I've been using for a cabin), shipping water (s
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Summary leave a question unanswered (Score:2)
Why would I want to give them any money for this product?
Sounds almost like the Canned Air in Spaceballs! (Score:2)
I wonder if these cans come in a suite of presidential luggage, where the combo is 1-2-3-4-5
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More like the dehydrated water from Space Quest 2.
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Woops Space Quest 1
Star Wars? (Score:2)
BS (Score:2)
I could see this water extraction system as being useful to have if you live in the middle of the desert. But whats the point of the canned water for sale? Does that use less energy to make than desalination and reverse osmosis? I highly doubt it. Are there any traces of the "dessicant" ? Niot sure what you're buying here, I don't think it's any purer than regular RO or disttilled water. I also think it's less environmentall friendly.
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Pretty sure it will just be expensive, feel good water- save the environment or something.
If they raise the pH enough and label it as "Alkaline Water made from Himalayan Air", they won't have any trouble selling it.
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air water (Score:1)
Thunderf00t busted this a long time ago. (Score:1)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
While not exactly the same claims being busted the video is still busting the general idea of getting water from the air.
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There's nothing wrong with the idea of getting water from air. It's where you almost certainly get your water, unless you're one of the very few people who get it from a desalination plant. A machine to do it could be pretty useful in some places. Most places there are much better ways. Canning and selling it is a silly publicity stunt, novelty retail item, or playing on the stupidity of consumers. Usually a decent bet, that last one.
The problem with "busting" things is that they either make very specific c
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There's nothing wrong with the idea of getting water from air. It's where you almost certainly get your water, unless you're one of the very few people who get it from a desalination plant.
There's absolutely something wrong with getting water from air, the cost.
I know that people will make the claim that solar power is "free" but in reality it is not. There's an upfront cost for the material and labor to produce the facilities to collect the light of the sun, recurring costs for things like taxes and maintenance, which must be somehow aggregated over the electricity produced to give a $/MWh. We can then use that energy to extract potable water from the air, desalinate water from the sea, pu
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It is not the most efficient method, in general. In situations where those more efficient methods are unavailable, it's a good solution.
Bottling water from a condenser is dumb. It's a publicity stunt. Some people undoubtedly will pay $20 for a bottle of "from the air water," just like they pay several dollars for a bottle of from the tap water. Just like some idiots will pay thousands for a dehumidifier. [amazon.ca]
This particular company seems to
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Yeah lots of places get water from the air for free, as dew. In fact, some places get redwood forest amounts of water from the air. Anytime air is at the dew point you can extract as much water as you can dump the heat. Of course, that's still going to compare poorly to drilling a well or using a river, it's more energy than desalination too, and a truckload of water can be delivered as well. So its utility is limited to a very niche.
Pshaww.... (Score:2)
Meh, boring. I'm going to be selling canned rainbows made of 100% organic space vacuum and sustainably-harvested unicorn farts next month.
Old Saying Still Holds True (Score:2)
"A fool and his money are soon parted."
https://www.phrases.org.uk/mea... [phrases.org.uk]
But (Score:2)
Where do the cans come from?
Making aluminium involves lots of electric power...
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The process, according to the company website: (Score:2)
They claim that "SOURCE meets or exceeds water quality standards outlined in the Safe Drinking Water Act and local standards at SOURCE installations worldwide." and that there is "Monitoring for Quality and Safety" ("Our commitment to quality and safety means SOURCE is built to create and maintain the highest-quality drinking water, with an integrated system keeping the stored water safe. A wireless transmitter inside each SOURCE Hydropanel system
Breatharians (Score:2)
are gonna suck this up!
Sounds disgusting (Score:2)
How large? (Score:2)
Doing things the hard way (Score:2)
Even in Arizona, water is not that hard to get in other ways. I suspect this might have been pitched as a way to use peak power from solar farms so it doesn't go to waste. In the Summer you'd think that would correspond well with air conditioner use; but maybe there's excess power at other times. I think they'd be better off producing liquid nitrogen, electroplating things, or some other industrial process. Nobody needs canned water that came all the way from Arizona. Even in California when there's a
Why Arizona? Why not Florida? (Score:2)
It's dry air in Arizona. It's humid as hell in Florida. If you want to pull moisture out of the air I would think that would be a better location.
Mmmhmmm (Score:2)
packaging (Score:1)
Yay! (Score:2)
This'll go great with my PerriAir!
Does it come with mold spores and algea (Score:2)
or do I have to supply that myself?
Where I live, an irrigation well costs maybe 20k-30k to install, and another 3k worth of solar panels will pump up enough water for considerably more than 11 people per day.
Out in the boonies, I suspect well installations cost less, even if the water table is deeper down.
Mostly snakeoil, I suspect.
Windtrap (Score:2)
Sounds like a modern windtrap (think Dune by Frank Herbert).
Or if you prefer a Star Wars ref: It's a (wind-)trap!
Marketing gimmick (Score:2)