Bicycle Bottle System Condenses Humidity From Air Into Drinkable Water 167
Diggester writes The weight of water limits how much can be brought on a long bike ride. There isn't always an option to stop and fill up from a clean stream or drinking fountain, but water could be obtained from a different source: the air. Austrian industrial design student Kristof Retezár has created Fontus: a prototype of a water bottle system that condenses humid air into clean, drinkable water. His design made him a finalist for the 2014 James Dyson Award.
Hmmm ... (Score:5, Interesting)
So, a small wind turbine (or taking turns on a bike), and any hot humid area where clean drinking water can be scarce is a good fit for this.
I can see this applying to FAR more than cycling.
Interesting.
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Yes, of all the possible places this could be used it seems bizarre he decided to focus on the cyclist market.
Re:Hmmm ... (Score:5, Funny)
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He focused on the cycling market because it's just a dehumidifier, which means it is just a cut down heat moving machine (air conditioner). You can buy those for your home for pretty cheap already.
The interesting thing here is that it's done with Peltiers, which while an obvious advance in technology, isn't one (peltiers for dehumidifying) anyone has found a use for yet, AFAIK, since it is not as efficient as using your standard air conditioner setup.
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I'm a cyclist. So I can safely say, that serious cyclist spending $5k+ on a bike are doing so for weight. Those are the same people who spend $100 for a carbon bottle cage that weighs only a few grams less than a $5 plastic or metal cage.
I'm a cyclist too, so I can safely say, that most cyclists spending $5K on a bike are doing so for appearance only, because if they lost just a few pounds of the extra weight they are carrying, it would save more money than the upgrade from a $2500 to a $5000 bike. I had a 250 lb friend who actually drilled out various components on his bike to save a few grams of weight. It wasn't until he snapped off his drilled out chainring that he realized that maybe the manufacturer already cut out as much weight as
Re:Hmmm ... (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah well I'm a 400km a week cyclist and I do Ironman. A 5K bike is NOT just about weight. Aero, stiffness, handling, quality of carbon, ride..... they all factor in and THAT means time savings or watt savings.
Anyone that thinks 5K for a bike is just about weight is a cafe racer. Yeah sure, maybe a 2K sportive is about 10 minutes slower than a S-Works Tarmac over 90 kms but that is huge difference when your ass is on the saddle. The sportive is also wasting watts on frame twist, the S-Works puts every scrap to the wheel. Or how about alloy verses carbon aero wheels? I dont wear 45mm carbon wheels for weight, it's all about aero gains. Or how about a set of 3T aeromax handlebars? Dont have those for weight, those save 20watts at my typical speed. Oh and they remove road hum too.
And the real reason why I ride expensive bikes? After 200 kms I'm feeling okay enough to turn around and do it again. Cheaper bikes leave you a rattled sore mess.
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That used to be the case long long ago.
Nowadays an average bike with amortized seat and front fork will ensure that even a fairly cheap frame and wheels won't tax you with vibration. The only problem is that you'll have to use about 5% more energy on the same route because portion of your spent energy will go into depressing the shock absorbers in the front fork.
Now if you cycle at fairly extreme speeds where air drag becomes a serious issue, I can see going for a more expensive model, but in reality, all o
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I ride about five to six hours a week, and there are the occasional 3-4 hour rides where I would drain my bidon and wouldn't mind having it filled for me without having to stop. Not saying I would buy this in its current form, but it wouldn't be much extra power to have an induction generator or something attached to the wheel for the novelty of it. I had some rides while training for the Ironman where this would have been welcome.
I think I'll post this to slowtwitch.com and get their opinions.
Plus, you do
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I'm a cyclist. So I can safely say, that serious cyclist spending $5k+ on a bike are doing so for weight. Those are the same people who spend $100 for a carbon bottle cage that weighs only a few grams less than a $5 plastic or metal cage.
Rubber bands are even lighter.
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It's because for most places you can make a more efficient, cheaper and more easily scalable version with a bucket, some plastic and a rock. The only drawback is that it's harder to mount on a bike.
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Post to undo bad mod.
Ugh, really with they had an undo button.
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going for the cyclist market isn't bizarre at all if you know that the dehumidifier water makers already have been in car size form for years(as seen on pimp my ride many, many years ago).
if he had just made a box to sit in the yard, then nothing new there. but put the box in a drinking bottle and boom new invention(nevermind if you need to be next to a waterfall for it to make enough for you to drink).
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You could use it to dehumidify an entire house! I mean, in summer when you have hot, muggy air something like this, obviously on a bigger scale, could do wonders to remove the moisture plus even maybe a bit of heat in the air making it much more comfortable in a space.
Re:Hmmm ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Point of fact: it's just an air conditioner. The only difference is that it uses mechanical power instead of electrical to run its heat pump.
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Actually, if I read the article correctly it's a peltier cooler that runs off of solar panels. The fact that its on a bike is just his version of a solution looking for a problem in a market with disposable income.
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And a peltier cooler is lower-efficiency than a normal heat pump, and they don't last forever either. Still, it's hard to get an A/C unit into a bike bottle.
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The fact it is on a bike makes the air move into it.
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Agreed. I'm a cyclist, both short and long distance.
I've never had a problem with getting water. A cyclist can easily travel 10 miles an hour, even fully loaded. Its easy enough to refill every few hours. Even if I was in the boondocks, I could carry a water filter and fill up from streams.
I suppose there are places without sources of water for tens of miles, but it's a very rare corner case.
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Uh, please tell me that was sarcasm.
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Arid areas aren't usually high-humidity.
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They're high enough. You just need a bigger condenser.
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Even easier ... attach this and a solar panel to a weather vane, so it's always pointed into the wind.
Put it somewhere which has both humidity and wind, but not necessarily clean drinking water.
The differences between a bike-mounted application and a stationary one aren't insurmountable engineering. Just reusing existing stuff. In a lot of places, solar power and prevailing winds will go a long way.
What awesome thing have you designed which could make the world a better place? What's that? Nothing?
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Re:Hmmm ... (Score:5, Funny)
LOL, to heck with the drinking water ... of far more importance to Slashdotters is this article which shows up on the side of that page ...
The Automatic Sperm Sample Extractor [thescienceworld.com].
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Thank you so much for that pearl. You made my day.
Still laughing at the picture of that thing sitting in the hallway. I can already imagine some random guy humping it while normal hospital life goes by and no one batting an eye because it's all perfectly normal.
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Considering their "one child" policy, why would a Chinese hospital invent this?
Re:Hmmm ... (Score:5, Informative)
The article gives a rate of 1 drop per minute when it "starts to work". This means a standard 1/2 liter bottle would take over 2.5 hours to fill in 68 degree weather at 50% humidity, which doesn't seem that practical.
In idea conditions, it still take an hour to fill that bottle. 0.5 L is not a lot in 100% humidity, and whatever hot temperature the maker considers ideal.
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And if you're riding around in that you'll sweat out far more than you'll gain in extra collection.
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Someone should invent a suit the rider could wear that distils the sweat for reuse. A suit for distilling sweat, or a sweatsuit as I like to call it.
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So, a small wind turbine (or taking turns on a bike), and any hot humid area where clean drinking water can be scarce is a good fit for this.
A few years back, a long and brutal heat wave driving both temperature and humidity close to the century mark lead to the closing of our local recreational and commuter bike paths after the collapse of cyclists who would have been considered young, fit, and adequately prepared.
The Numbers Lie (Score:1)
You cannot produce a maximum of 500ml/hour and 1 drop/minute. 1 drop per minute is approximately 3.9ml/hour. This sounds like a more realistic figure than 500ml.
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Even at a drop per second it seems optimistic to expect 500mL an hour. I think a drop is less than 0.14mL.
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One drop is about 0.05 ml, i.e. 20 drops per mililitre. (When talking about water.)
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Yeah. The AC had it as .001mL per drop, which is very low. 0.05 mL per second gives you 180 mL an hour, which is pretty much useless to a person riding a bicycle.
The numbers vary (Score:4, Informative)
1 drop per minute is at 20C and 50% RH = 3ml/hr (0.05ml/drop). At that temp/RH, there is 0.01 kg moisture per kg of air. But in hot, humid weather (say 35C and 90% RH), there is 4x as much moisture in the air. More importantly, at 20/50% the dew point is 9C, or a delta T of 11C that the (horribly inefficient) peltier cooler must keep just to condense moisture. At 35C, and 90% RH, the dew point is 33C, requiring only a 2C delta T across the cooler, allowing more of the power to be used for the latent heat of condensation.
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Yeah, exactly. I suspect you'll never match human losses without a much larger energy source for the condenser.
This is a much better product for areas with poor drinking water quality, but those people don't have a spare $200 for a new bicycle gadget. This was custom made for the Sharper Image / Hammacher Schlemmer catalog, not some third world peace corp work.
Re: The numbers vary (Score:2)
Have you ever seen the prices in those gadget catalogs? An iPhone is only ~175 in parts, but they retail for 600-900. Maybe they'll have it on sale for 169 on Black Friday.
Doesn't distilled water taste horrible though? (Score:3)
Re:Doesn't distilled water taste horrible though? (Score:4, Interesting)
Pure water does taste a little off, which is why bottled water companies add minerals to their product.
If this is a big concern for athletes or anyone else using this system, they could easily transport a very small amount of mineral mix to dissolve in the water to fix the problem.
Personally, I'd be shocked if this was the biggest problem. Athletes require far more fluids than this will be able to provide. I don't see this being practical.
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Your body needs the salts and minerals so it tastes "off" in order to discourage you from drinking only water that is too pure. It's similar to how you start to crave salty foods if your sodium levels get too low.
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Most cyclists already do this. There are tablets you drop into your water bottle to up the mineral and salts versus even tap water. Adding them to this bottle is a trivial problem.
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Windtrap (Score:1)
adrift at sea (Score:1)
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IIRC, The Professor built one of these out of bamboo, and then made Gilligan pedal the bicycle.
I thought they just drank the water out of the coconuts broken open on the Skipper's head, which seems to happen every time he stands under a coconut tree.
"Industrial design student" (Score:5, Informative)
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Then, I see one of two possibilities ...
1) The people in charge of giving out an engineering design award are morons who also don't know thermodynamics.
2) You're not as right as you think you are.
So, unless the people who have looked at this and made him a finalist have all been hoodwinked ... I'm afraid 2) is the simpler explanation for me.
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Note that it's an award for industrial design, which is an arts (not engineering) program. The inventor is a student at an applied arts school.
Does that change your assessment?
How much does the device weigh? (Score:2)
Plus the camelback is multipurpose and can carry snacks, tools, etc.
Re:How much does the device weigh? (Score:4, Funny)
Normal water is too heavy when travelling by bike so I always bring dehydrated water instead.
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I just bring hydrogen and burn it as needed.
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How much of the camel does that thing have attached to it? A liter of water is one kilogram, 2.2 pounds.
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Just in case you're not up on this, I believe he's talking about a Camelbak [camelbak.com]. It's basically a backpack with a bladder for holding water and a hose that you can drink from. They're handy for bicyclists and runners who want to keep moving and not fiddle with bottles.
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I'm perfectly aware of that, but if a camelback weighs 4 pounds with a liter of water in it, it's made of 1.8 pounds of nylon.
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I'm perfectly aware of that, but if a camelback weighs 4 pounds with a liter of water in it, it's made of 1.8 pounds of nylon.
That's about the empty weight of many models. I'm referring to the complete unit, pack with bladder.
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I guess if 1 liter is all you'll ever need. There are people who do distance biking and 1 liter is a joke.
I used 1L in the example since the device was claiming 0.5L an hour under ideal conditions. The weights I used for the camelback itself were actually for a 3L model. Personally I always fill it to 3L despite normally consuming 1.5L on rides and hikes. I'd rather have extra than go without, plus its a safety margin. If I think I'll need all 3L to get from one fill to another I'll bring a second 3L bladder.
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I have a revolutionary idea.... (Score:2)
You can also stop and get more water. I know I know.... Crazy talk.
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If this bicycle goes slower than 55 Miles Per Hour, it will explode!
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Not everywhere. Which is kind of the point.
And there are places in the world which have high humidity but not ready access to clean drinking water. Pretty much any coastline along an ocean, for example.
Anything which does small scale extraction like this is pretty cool, which is precisely why he's now a finalist for the Dyson Award.
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And, now, use that tiny little brain of yours and take the bicycle out of the equation.
Do you think that a place like, say, Haiti, which has sun, humidity and wind aplenty, but lots of problems getting sanity drinking water couldn't use this technology?
Make it s
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"Do you think that a place like, say, Haiti, which has sun, humidity and wind aplenty, but lots of problems getting sanity drinking water couldn't use this technology?"
Yes. Using a Peltier element to essentially produce a solar powered solid state air conditioner is a really inefficient way of purifying water. For small scale desalination or purification where distillation is necessary, a solar still works much better and can be made with much cheaper and available materials. Often you can make one out o
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... don't they already have solutions that use filtration... don't cost an enormous amount... and don't require electronics to function? if you're talking about haiti, this is literally reinventing the wheel... poorly.
Just a demonstration platform (Score:2)
It really is not a real problem that needs a solution.
Its a technology that needs a demonstration platform. I wouldn't read too much into cycling being used for these demonstrations.
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I bet you even want to make water available at no charge. You probably think it should just gush freely at the push of a button for anybody. You probably think government funded agencies should install such devices at locations where people are likely to be thirsty. Communist. /sarc.
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Wasn't there a TV's show joke about this? (Score:2)
From plants to animals (Score:1)
Water Vapourware (Score:1)
One way or another, this will be vapourware.....
a) It is "a gadget created by Kristof Retezár, an industrial design student at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna."
b) It takes water vapour, or humidity out of the air.
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So, that would mean that it doesn't emit gamma rays then?
I don't think I emit gamma rays, so ... I am doing cold fusion right now.
Natalie Portman doesn't emit gamma rays I bet.
Marmalade, also doesn't emit gamma rays,
So, the secret to cold fusion is me, a jar of marmalade, and Natalie Portman.
For scientific completeness, I will need several female volunteers who aren't celeb
How long is a "long bike ride"? (Score:2)
I've trained for (and completed) a marathon and done some long-ish bike rides (several hours), not to mention taken long hikes and hours of physical labor / yard work in both the burning heat and freezing cold. The water provided by a Camelbak or a couple bottles was enough to keep things together, and the extra weight wasn't exactly killing me or making the activity impossible. If you are decently hydrated to start with, doing an hour of reasonably difficult exercise is perfectly doable with no water at al
Instant Stuff (Score:3)
All I know... (Score:2)
I'm cycle touring in Africa (Score:2)
oops (Score:2)
Clever but as they've just shown the entire world how to make it we'll have to see who actually brings it to market first.
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And on a downhill bike ride, the weight of water increases your braking distance.
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Here in Orlando, FL you can just hold up an empty glass and slice moisture out of the air with a butter knife. It'd work well here.
I think there's actually a great market for something like this if it can be made to be light, compact and durable. Something small and light to take on backcountry camping trips to supplement drinking water.
Bigger versions of it, if they could be made to be cheap and reliable enough, could be extremely useful for off-grid permanent installations. Case in point, Canaveral Na
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This idea that distilled water is somehow bad for you is largely a myth. Yes, under the right circumstances it's a problem but those circumstances are as likely as needing asteroid collision insurance for your car. You have to drink nothing but distilled water in insanely high amounts with no food intake in order to get to the point that the distilled water causes illness. That's not going to be an issue here, it might be an issue if you're on a lifeboat and haven't had food in a few weeks and nothing but d
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There may be a non trivial issue if you take on severe exercise and then shortly ingurgitate a lot of water (distilled or poor in salts), which happens after you sweat a lot of electrolytes. But that'd be your own fault for being dumb. Some people do kill themselves with water poisoning, and that's not distilled water.
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Before you leave the house, spoon a couple of scoops of powdered sports-water into the bottom of the container?
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Good point. And if you have all those cyclists breathing hard, they'll produce more CO2 which is a greenhouse gas.
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That's right, you can't, because nobody has objectively asked and tried to answer that question, not the inventors of such devices and not you. It's a question that ought to be answered BEFORE we add yet another variable to the climate system. not AFTER we have hundreds of thousands or millions of the devices in operation.
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I'm trying to decide if you're joking or not. The article says 0.5 liters per hour, which is frankly less than you sweat, so in this case it's a zero sum. You also expire a half kilo of water every night by breathing...I think we don't need to worry about sandworms just yet.
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Do you actually have data on how much moisture must be removed from the atmosphere before measurable effects are seen, either in micro- or macro-climate? I doubt it. That is the problem. Your suspicion doesn't cut it.
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My kingdom for mod points! (+1 Funny)
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