How much water do you have in your air?
Posted on 06/06/2007 9:44:52 AM PDT by BGHater
An architect pursuing a PhD at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and his colleague have devised a low-tech way to collect dew from the air and turn it into fresh water. Their invention recently won an international competition seeking to make clean, safe water available to millions around the world.
The brainchild of Technion Architecture and Building Planning grad student Joseph Cory and his colleague Eyal Malka, “WatAir,” is an inverted pyramid array of panels that collects dew from the air and turns it into fresh water in almost any climate.
Inspired by the dew-collecting properties of leaves, one 315 sq ft unit can extract a minimum of 48 liters of fresh water from the air each day. Depending on the number of collectors used, an unlimited daily supply of water could be produced even in remote and polluted places.
According to Cory, WatAir can be easily incorporated into both rural and urban landscapes because it has a relatively small base. Its vertical and diagonal design utilizes gravity to increase the collection areas. The panels are flexible and easy to collapse when not in use, and provide shelter from rain and heat and play areas for children.
“WatAir is a wonderfully simple concept which draws its inspiration from nature,” said competition judge Jo da Silva. “This is a simple and effective idea using tried and tested technology.”
The project was selected from 100 entries from North America, Europe, Africa and Asia as the winner of the “drawing water challenge” sponsored by Arup – a global firm of designers, engineers, planners and business consultants specializing in innovative and sustainable design.
Geotectura and Malka Architects, the respective architectural studios of Cory and Malka, are located in Haifa, Israel.
The Technion-Israel Institute of Technology is Israel's leading science and technology university. Home to the country’s winners of the Nobel Prize in science, it commands a worldwide reputation for its pioneering work in nanotechnology, computer science, biotechnology, water-resource management, materials engineering, aerospace and medicine. The majority of the founders and managers of Israel's high-tech companies are alumni. Based in New York City, the American Technion Society is the leading American organization supporting higher education in Israel, with 17 offices around the country.
That’s what Luke Skywalker did before running off to fight the empire.
Why do I see a Global Desiccation Crisis in our future?
It would have been a better article if the author would address if this item required energy input for operations.
This is what some arid regions have been doing for generations. If someone whats to dig them out, there are some images of a huge facility somewhere in the Mediterranean or off the coast of Africa.
http://www.inhabitat.com/2007/04/16/watair-turning-air-into-water/
Here is some computer graphics of the stuff. Interesting.
How much water do you have in your air?
Not much, too much hot air around me and coming from me.
This tech has been around for a while. Your air conditioner makes water out of thin air.
The writer lost me when he said that they collect dew from the air. Dew is a non scientific term for condensation that happens on humid mornings.
Sting likes it.
*snicker*
The structure can operate well enough using day/night variations. It would cool at night and collect dew in the morning as the air warms. No power requirement. It has to be very large to provide a significant amount of water.
As a kid when I was a boy scout they taught us how to set up something similar using your poncho & a hole to collect water overnight in survival situations. This is just an oversized version of that old technique.
But when I lived in Yemen, the 40°F temperature swings from day to night rarely produced dew clinging to any structure as there was next to no moisture in the air to collect. They may have done something to encourage the water molecule to cling to the material. Could be a similar concept to the mentos/diet coke formation of CO2 gas bubbles.
Beats wearing a stillsuit, Thufir!
If you are out at sea on a sailboat with no electricity (genuine purist) you might have rigged up a sheet of poly in that shape and got plenty of drinking water. It helps to be sitting over a large body of water. Probably wouldn’t be so effective in an arid inland region of dust and sand.
Isn’t this what the Boy Scouts teach when in survival training with a piece of plastic, four sticks and small rock? And this guy gets his PhD for it? Whoa!
Inspiration? I thought it relied on condensation!
I watched Survivorman do this very thing.
I remember reading about some pacific island years ago, where this sort of thing was the only source of water. Can’t remember the name.
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