Posted on 04/13/2017 1:42:49 PM PDT by NoLibZone
You can’t squeeze blood from a stone, but wringing water from the desert sky is now possible, thanks to a new spongelike device that uses sunlight to suck water vapor from air, even in low humidity. The device can produce nearly 3 liters of water per day, and researchers say future versions will be even better. That means homes in the driest parts of the world could soon have a solar-powered appliance capable of delivering all the water they need, offering relief to billions of people.
To find an all-purpose solution, researchers led by Omar Yaghi, a chemist at the University of California, Berkeley, turned to a family of crystalline powders called metal organic frameworks, or MOFs. Yaghi developed the first MOFs—porous crystals that form continuous 3D networks—more than 20 years ago. The networks assemble in a Tinkertoy-like fashion from metal atoms that act as the hubs and sticklike organic compounds that link the hubs together. By choosing different metals and organics, chemists can dial in the properties of each MOF, controlling what gases bind to them, and how strongly they hold on.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencemag.org ...
"By choosing different metals and organics, chemists can dial in the properties of each MOF, controlling what gases bind to them, and how strongly they hold on."
When we camped we always used a black tarp...when plastics became available we used that. Condensation is a wonderful thing
3L of water ain’t much by the way. Scaling will be the big issue.....true for all engineering projects
They don’t mention the size of the device, nor its cost, per liter produced.
I’m quite interested.
If you suck the CO2 from the air, all of life will cease to exist!!
I’d gather CO2 by growing plants.
There’s a picture at the link. The device (presumably the one that can produce 3L of water) looks to be about the size of a 1-quart milk container.
Apparently modern science now considers desert air to be too humid.
It isn’t much, but if you have a few units, it could begin to pile up some decent amounts.
Didn’t look, but I wonder how big it is. A yard full of collectors for three gallons a day wouldn’t exactly make my day.
>>can produce nearly 3 liters of water per day..
>>..soon...
>>..capable of delivering all the water they need
Soon is a long way off in these stories.
The condensate from a standard home heat pump can run several gallons per day in a humid climate, and that’s not even designed to be efficient in producing it, the condensate is treated as a nuisance byproduct.
Al Gore said this will result in uncontrollable global warming.
Put in a million of them, suck all the moisture out of the air and kill everything that was already there depending on that moisture. Sounds like a great idea. You only think there is nothing living in the desert, they are tremendously diverse beautiful places full of life. And they need that water too.
All of these “Blood from a turnip” ideas are limited by one, single factor - HUMIDITY. If the humidity is zero, you’ll get NO water. The average humidity in the Saharian desert is 25%. The energy required to condense that moisture is cost prohibitive.
Step 2: After people are sick from mineral deficiency by drinking distilled water for a few years we will then have to ...... Oh never mind.
Distilled water is actually healthy. Rainwater is distilled; and the water you’d get out of this machine is also “distilled”.
I drank nothing but distilled water for a year or so. Never got sick, because I got my minerals from my FOOD, amazing huh.
One of my hobbies of late is to see how little water I can use per day.
If you couple that sort of an effort with recycling your water, you can make startling reductions in how little water you need to get by.
Right now I get by on about 1.5 gallons per day. That includes hygiene and hydration. It does not involve recycling.
I have studied the issues involved with using less that that. If I had to, I might be able to get by with as little as 1/10th of a gallon per day, with good hygiene and hydration. That's 36 gallons per year.
My plants would not be happy campers.
Right now Phoenix is 88 degrees and 12% humidity. If I read the chart right that’s about 6 milliliters of water per cubic meter of air. Just watch as everyone downwind complains that you are stealing their moisture.
I did some research on this product a while back. The sizzle doesn’t match the steak. If you are planning to trek out into the wilderness in hot arid regions of the world thinking this will provide your hydration needs. Please leave a note as to where we can locate your dead desiccated body for recovery.
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