water from the air
See, among other links:
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/0...
You know, I've been around dehumidifiers for decades, but never once thought of this. And then it's so obvious.
(Not that this uses quite that tech, but, the principle of the thing.)
Straight-line extrapolations into the future -- that trick never works.
Ta, L.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/0...
You know, I've been around dehumidifiers for decades, but never once thought of this. And then it's so obvious.
(Not that this uses quite that tech, but, the principle of the thing.)
Straight-line extrapolations into the future -- that trick never works.
Ta, L.
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Serendi
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Jun 16, 2017 10:39AM
About a zillion years ago I read a Modesty Blaise novel in which they stay alive by using plastic at a cave entrance to condense water from cacti they brought in. Kinda cool.
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Condensing water from desert air was in the original Dune novel, too.
Cool! I'm glad to see that something so SF-nal can really work. I always figured that's what Owen and Beru Lars used on Tatooine - those "moisture vaporators" that C3PO could communicate with.
When I was in the Marine Corps (A long long time ago) as part of our escape and infiltration training we were shown how to make a solar still from scraps of plastic and a hole in the ground. I even had a chance (was forced) to taste a couple of sips of the resulting "water". I t was clear and tasted much worse than you would have expected. But it is almost 50 years later and I am still alive.
It's the water-on-the-spot, no extra power needed efficiency that intrigues me with this one. Water per se is wildly abundant in the world, it just happens to be downhill and full of salts or other contaminants. Fresh free water on the tops of hills with free gravity distribution is naturally in much shorter supply.This could (if proved and the price drops) do for water distribution what cell phones do to the need for phone land-lines, knocking out the need for a great deal of expensive infrastructure (not just reservoirs and pipes but wells), putting it in the hands of poorer or more remote regions. It wouldn't just be for deserts, although in places where fresh water was abundant there would be economic competition.
Much to reflect upon.
Ta, L.
Serendi wrote: "About a zillion years ago I read a Modesty Blaise novel in which they stay alive by using plastic at a cave entrance to condense water from cacti they brought in. Kinda cool."I sure miss reading Modesty and Willie's adventures everyday in my paper.
In Southern California the population is outrunning the water supply (and other things). It would help with one problem. Another invention I just read about was making electricity from urine and thereby cleaning it before it went into the sewage system. It would sure cut water treatment costs.
And, science being science, there have been further developments in the area since the original article referred to in the Science piece came out. The newer materials show something like twice as theoretically effective as the materials in the original article in appropriate relative humidity conditions, and use significantly cheaper metals. The article is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acscentsci.... and is open access, so anyone can have a look.
You mean I can be a moisture farmer like Luke Skywalker?! I'm in.
Dehumidifiers were needed when I was a kid, but they didn't last long so I WANTED the ones in Star Wars. This is really spiffy.
