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Spanish Engineers Extract Drinking Water From Thin Air (reuters.com) 131

Posted by BeauHD from the just-needs-power dept.
A Spanish company has devised a system to extract drinking water from thin air to supply arid regions where people are in desperate need. Reuters reports: "The goal is to help people," said Enrique Veiga, the 82-year-old engineer who invented the machine during a harsh drought in southern Spain in the 1990s. "The goal is to get to places like refugee camps that don't have drinking water." The devices made by his company, Aquaer, are already delivering clean, safe water to communities in Namibia and a Lebanese refugee camp. "In the villages we visited in Namibia, they were astonished, they didn't understand, asking where the water came from," he said.

The machines use electricity to cool air until it condenses into water, harnessing the same effect that causes condensation in air-conditioning units. While other water generators based on similar technology require high ambient humidity and low temperatures to function effectively, Veiga's machines work in temperatures of up to 40 Celsius (104F) and can handle humidity of between 10% and 15%. A small machine can produce 50-75 liters a day, and be easily carried on a trolley, but bigger versions can produce up to 5,000 liters a day.
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Spanish Engineers Extract Drinking Water From Thin Air

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  • Next up, sthilsuits (Score:5, Funny)

    by zlives ( 2009072 ) on Thursday August 05, 2021 @06:07AM (#61658409)

    The sleeper has awoken

    • Hah. I was just thinking. Wind traps. Huge ones!

      In all seriousness though, I want to know what the energy budget is. Either they are supercooling a small draft with something like a Peltier stack or they are cooling a lot with a compressor. Either way, that is going to take a lot of power there probably is Not a lot of in such an environment. Also, 80 liters is good for about 3.7 liters a day. You have enough water for 21 people. For something like a large refugee camp, you are going to need a Beowulf clus

      • In an Aircon the cooled air is released into the room, "wasted" if your goal was to extract water.

          I wonder what kind of impact on energy use it would have, if the cooled air was fed to/mixed with the cooling air intake for the hot side of the peltier stack or compressor instead. Is this what standalone off-the-shelf dehumidifiers do?

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by jbengt ( 874751 )

          I wonder what kind of impact on energy use it would have, if the cooled air was fed to/mixed with the cooling air intake for the hot side of the peltier stack or compressor instead. Is this what standalone off-the-shelf dehumidifiers do?

          Yes, most do feed the air leaving the evaporator* coil to the intake of the condenser coil.

          *the evaporator coil is where the refrigerant evaporates and the humidity in the air passing through the coil condenses.

        • Is this what standalone off-the-shelf dehumidifiers do?

          Yes, the dehumidifiers that I have pass air to through the evaporator, (to extract the water) then the condenser (to cool the condenser down/ heat the air back up).

        • In an Aircon the cooled air is released into the room, "wasted" if your goal was to extract water.

          Connect a pipe around to the back of the unit and feed it back in. It lowers the running cost, increases efficiency.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by larwe ( 858929 )
        "High temperature low humidity" sounds like desert conditions to me. Desert conditions should have plentiful solar power, no? That piece seemed self-explanatory to me but now you have me doubting my assumptions.

        • [
          Was 'sthilsuits' a typo, or some joke I didn't get?
          My mind went to 'stihlsuit', which is something a logger might wear.
          }

          Plentiful solar power in deserts, yes, generally, but harvesting it in the daytime and using it to condense water at the same time might be a mistake.

          It might be more efficient to store the electricity until the sun sets and condense water in the dark hours when the temperature is lower and the relative humidity is higher.

          This might also allow people to charg

      • I don't know about this one, but the Israeli Watergen system is reported to use 250Wh per liter of water. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • Every year someone discovers the dehumidifier (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Shazatoga ( 614011 ) on Thursday August 05, 2021 @06:12AM (#61658421)
    If there was enough water in the air for humans to drink, then plants wouldn't be effected by a drought.

    For a more in-depth overview of why these technologies are BS see:
    Self filling water bottle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
    Waterseer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by pjt33 ( 739471 )

      "Every year"? This is old news even by /. standards.

    • Yup, plus "work in temperatures of up to 40 Celsius..." (about the same temp as where a simple fan will actually start making you feel hotter, rather than cooler). So, not great for many areas that actually need it, especially with current trends. Maybe could work at night, but then there's no solar for the electricity, unless batteries...so the whole thing starts looking very expensive.

    • Re:Every year someone discovers the dehumidifier (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Kisai ( 213879 ) on Thursday August 05, 2021 @07:04AM (#61658495)

      It's called a dehumidifer, and they've been a thing for decades.

      As for "pulling moisture from the air" for extended periods of time. While at small scale this will have no effect on the planet, but if we start doing this at commercial scale, it will be a problem, as it will start causing localized drying much for the same reason pollution causes local vegetation to die. It upsets the equilibrium in the air.

      Cue "deathstill" from Dune.

      I have to wonder if this "new" device consumes energy at substantial levels, or if it can run off solar/wind generated in the immediate location.

    • Re:Every year someone discovers the dehumidifier (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Alain Williams ( 2972 ) <addw@phcomp.co.uk> on Thursday August 05, 2021 @07:34AM (#61658517) Homepage

      I do not think that there is a claim that this is new to science. What they [aquaer.com] do have is a range of machines [aquaer.com] that will extract 75-10,000 litres of water a day. If you live in an arid area one of these could make your life much better.

      It is much easier to criticize than to do - what have you done to help humanity ?

      • There are plenty of regions where this would work perfectly. For instance coastal regions around the arabic peninsula.

        • If you are in an arid coastal area, ancient solar still "technology" works marvelously. No need for expensive, electricity hogging machines.

          • No idea what you want to say with that.

            How does "ancient solar technology" get moisture out of the air?

            No need for expensive, electricity hogging machines.
            a: they are not expensaive
            b: put a few cheap solar panels on top of them

            Sorry, what actually is your point?

            • No idea what you want to say with that.

              How does "ancient solar technology" get moisture out of the air?

              It doesn't. You specifically brought up coastal areas. Why expend the effort to get water out of the air, especially with low humidity, when there is already water at the coast? A solar still enables you to separate the water from the salt and other stuff in sea water cheaply and easily. In other places where liquid water is not plentiful I can see the benefit.

              No need for expensive, electricity hogging machines. a: they are not expensaive b: put a few cheap solar panels on top of them

              Sorry, what actually is your point?

              I'm pretty sure they are expensive compared to some plastic and some pipe, but what made you say they are not expensive? Did you find a price? The ar

              • Because it is decentralised system.
                And a desalination plant is a huge investment.

                And probably the water it makes is dozens if not 100 times more expensive.

                You are just one of those stupid nay sayers who has something against progress.

                Lastly, you seem awfully defensive about this, do you have some affiliation with the project?
                No. Why would I?

                Are you affiliated with desalination plant companies? No you how silly your comment is.

                I have been at plenty of places, where this technology will work great: e.g. Oman

                • Wow. With the name calling now. I can't tell if you are just angry person, or more of a rambunctious troll. Either way, have a good day.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by tragedy ( 27079 )

              It's not clear that they would produce as much water, but technologies like what the GP is referring to do exist. Basically you can make a tower of rocks so that condensation forms on the inside and trickles down to a collector at the base.

    • If there was enough water in the air for humans to drink, then plants wouldn't be effected by a drought.

      For a more in-depth overview of why these technologies are BS see:

      Self filling water bottle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
      Waterseer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

      Yeah, Thunderf00t will be ripping this apart, if he hasn't already

    • This whole "technology" keeps coming up every other year or so, and each one shows it requires a massive amount of energy to extract even a tiny amount of water out of the air.
      • I thought there was some kind of copper sponge [thenewhumanitarian.org] that did it efficiently

      • Someone above posted, one liter is about 1/4 kWh.
        That doesn't sound like much.

    • The real question concerning any of these dehumidifier based water devices is, how does it compare to transporting water from places where it's naturally abundant? If it's still more cost effective to transport water, people will do that. Which leaves very few applications for these devices.

    • Re:Every year someone discovers the dehumidifier (Score:5, Interesting)

      by gurps_npc ( 621217 ) on Thursday August 05, 2021 @10:40AM (#61659031) Homepage

      You have made key mistakes misunderstanding what these techs do.

      Those youtube videos correctly state that if there was enough water in the air to water tons of crop plants, then there would be no drought.

      That said, you are ignoring two other uses, besides ending a drought:

      1) While tons of plant matter can not be watered, a few hundred pounds of human flesh CAN be kept alive.

      2) For many people in the world, the problem is not a drought, but potable water. I.E. There is a lot of water in the air, and in rivers, but it has been filled with a) salt, b) diseases and/or c) pollution. It is often cheaper to get potable water via a dehumidifier than it is to clean the liquid water available everywhere.

      • Those youtube videos correctly state that if there was enough water in the air to water tons of crop plants, then there would be no drought.
        You are wrong. Most plants do not take water from air. They can't.
        If you ever had been in Oman, Dubai or Saudi Arabia, you had seen the desert (basically all plants you are seeing are irrigated) and the humidity is smashing you into the face.

    • Shazatoga, you've poured cold water on this, but I'm not quite willing to consign this effort to the dustbin of unworkable designs/scams.

      It disturbs me somewhat that you've been modded +4 insightful for a questionable statement:

      "If there was enough water in the air for humans to drink, then plants wouldn't be effected [sic] by a drought."

      The fact is that most deserts have some plant life that is adapted to the conditions. These plants find enough water to survive between the (ra

  • The article describes how an air conditioner works. It takes a lot of electricity to collect gallons of condensate from an air conditioner. I hope the refugee camps have lots of electric power available!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Nehmo ( 757404 )

      The article describes how an air conditioner works. It takes a lot of electricity to collect gallons of condensate from an air conditioner. I hope the refugee camps have lots of electric power available!

      The video https://youtu.be/fBBknrisvHU [youtu.be] claims the standard machine uses the same electricity as a washing machine, which is 500 watts. I'm suspicious of that, but even that isn't going to be easy for people of developing nations.

    • running the numnbers on power (Score:5, Informative)

      by v1 ( 525388 ) on Thursday August 05, 2021 @08:14AM (#61658569) Homepage Journal

      The article describes how an air conditioner works. It takes a lot of electricity to collect gallons of condensate from an air conditioner. I hope the refugee camps have lots of electric power available!

      That's what I was thinking - show me pictures of dozens of people huddled around a pump holding UNICEF water containers, "these people obviously don't have access to much electricity".

      But you'd think this would be a great thing in combination with solar, since a lot of these places have an abundance of sun. (if it were cloudy, they'd have higher humidity anyway, and higher chances of rain)

      Solar IS getting cheaper, but it takes a fair amount of panels to generate enough power to run a compressor, especially a big one. I'm just thinking about the amount of water my 25,000 BTU window unit made during the summer - not much. And that baby drew around 20-25 amps at 120vac. That's 3,000 watts. The flexible panels I have here, rated 100w, produce 75w actual in full sun, and you'd need FOURTY of them to produce 3,000w.

      At 46x21" each, assuming zero separation, that's about 270 square feet of average quality panels. (16 x 17 foot) That's a big plot of solar. I can get those panels for about $90/pc. If they can charity buy for $50/pc, that's $2,000 worth of solar panels, not counting hardware and support electronics.

      OK, $2,000 to run a 25kBTU unit. I saw the compressor in the video, that thing looked about 8" diameter, 16" long. Going to guess that draws at least twice what my window unit did. So double all of the above numbers. Close to 25x25 ft of panels, $4,000. At least they'll be able to collect their water in the shade!

      Now my window unit didn't produce a lot of water, but I assume this machine, optimized for water production, will do a lot better. But the numbers seem a bit unrealistic? We've seen con artist projects for drawing water from air, so I'd like to see some real analysis from someone with a scientific background, not just a retiree in a straw hat.

      A unit like this will also give off A LOT of heat. Close to 100% of that 4,000w is being turned into heat. The machine only works up to a certain temp, so that heat is going to have to be dumped somewhere. If there's a breeze, you'll be okay, otherwise you're heating the air around the unit and rapidly dropping efficiency. It works to 40c, and a lot of places this is marketed are already pretty close to that, so you MUST get the heat away from the unit.

      And it will quickly deplete the air of water in the vicinity, especially if there's no wind. If there's no airflow, the relative humidity in the area around the unit will quickly crash well below 10%. That always seems to be a factor that these water units don't take into account. So the production of the unit will drop rapidly as it heats up and dries out the air around it. I don't see these problems being addressed, and I suspect they're choosing to ignore them.

      My back-of-the-napkin math shows it'll work, but you'll (A) need a large amount of solar to power it, (B) the solar will add significantly to the cost, and (C) it'll only work if there's a breeze to cool it and bring in a continuous source of humid air. I don't know what the wind is like in places where this is being considered. Usually wind is driven by temperature differences on a large scale, think across tens and hundreds of miles. If you're in the middle of an arid region, is there any wind to speak of? No wind = no water.

      • You might be able to turn the waste heat to your advantage if you add a chimney and use stack effect to pull relatively humid air in while also exhausting the heated and dehumidified air somewhat higher than the air intakes so you don't end up just futilely cycling air with no moisture left through the system over and over; but that obviously adds nontrivial size in exchange for the power savings of needing less forced air movement; and isn't going to cause much macro-level air movement, so local desiccatio

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by v1 ( 525388 )

          You might be able to turn the waste heat to your advantage if you add a chimney and use stack effect to pull relatively humid air in while also exhausting the heated and dehumidified air somewhat

          That sounds like it might help. Though anytime I hear "we could take advantage of x to get y", I remember to take a step back and see if getting y is going to impact the efficiency of x. (sadly, it almost always does) One example is "the solar panels will be more efficient if we just add a small fan to blow over a

          • Using a stack is definitely an off-the-cuff and unverified solution; it just seemed like a reasonable avenue given that stack effect is well known to be fully sufficient to force air in contexts like fireplaces and wood stoves; and sufficiently tall chimneys do keep the concentration of unpleasant combustion products at ground level down(by spreading them far and wide; but still makes things more pleasant for people in the immediate proximity of the chimney) in industrial contexts; and chimneys of modest he

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jbengt ( 874751 )
        You're pretty accurate, but I wouldn't worry about a breeze to cool it. It has a fan to make its' own breeze and hotter air rises, so there wouldn't be that much recirculation of air, as long as it's in an open space.

      • The flexible panels I have here, rated 100w, produce 75w actual in full sun,
        That doesn't make any sense.
        If it is rated 100W it has to produce (+)100W under optimal conditions. Or it would be fraud.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by v1 ( 525388 )

          If it is rated 100W it has to produce (+)100W under optimal conditions. Or it would be fraud.

          It's basically the same as the huge numbers on new car MPG stickers. Whoever is controlling the standards has to draw up some highly specific rules for how the numbers are calculated. With cars, they put 1gal of gas in the tank, gun it, and when they run out of gas, they COAST to a stop, and THEN measure the mileage. Sure, it creates unrealistically high numbers, but at least it's consistent across cars.

          Solar is

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by v1 ( 525388 )

          FYI I did a little more number crunching and a touch of google (https://www.solar-electric.com/learning-center/solar-insolation-maps.html/) and do need to make a correction on my panel production. I've concluded he Dokio are only around 11% efficient, whereas commercial grade home solar is around 15% efficient. The Dokio are also about 55 x 22 inches in size, which is 6.8 square feet. (I don't know if their "efficiency" factors in losses from cell spacing and panel borders, I'm assuming it does)

          There's an

          • You hardly can find 15% efficient panels.
            The standard is around 20%.

            However I'm not really sure about what you want to talk about.

            The efficiency is irrelevant.

            You need to know how much W your panel can produce.

            80W, 100W etc.

            And how you want to utilize it, e.g. storing it in a battery, or not. Feeding it into the grid, or not. Or both.

            Going with x10 instead would probably compensate for controller and transmission line losses, and make the math even that much easier.
            On a 10 feet, or 10 yards line from your p

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by v1 ( 525388 )

              On a 10 feet, or 10 yards line from your panel to what ever it goes: you have no measurable loss.

              Yep as long as you keep the current low or the run short you won't notice losses. I calculated 5% loss running #10 fifty feet for one of my installations. I can ignore that I think, it's not worth it to run thicker copper.

              Same goes a lot of the time when considering pure CU over CCA. CCA is a lot cheaper and almost as good.

              Losses in the controller can be more significant though. Good controllers should be ab

              • I calculated 5% loss running #10 fifty feet for one of my installations.
                That sounds unusually high. Are you sure you made no mistake?

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by v1 ( 525388 )

                  I was considering different installations, including just paralleling all the panels, which would produce low volage and high current, making transmission losses high.

                  I've got a more suitable controller now that's good to 100v (which is still on the low side, for larger installations) and that's allowed me to use thinner transmission line even on long runs, due to the drop in current.

    • Re:Sounds like an air conditioner (Score:5, Interesting)

      by An Ominous Cow Erred ( 28892 ) on Thursday August 05, 2021 @08:49AM (#61658663)

      The really silly thing about this is that it uses more energy than you would spend building a pipeline to bring fresh water in. If there's no source of fresh water nearby, you can still build a desalination plant on the coast and a pipeline to bring in the desalinated water, and it STILL uses less energy than a dehumidifier does.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by thona ( 556334 )
        Yeah, I suggest you tell that to the UAE (United Arab Emirates).You know, Dubai. You know, the place that basically drinks desalinated water. Build a pipeline instead. Great. There you have a tremendous humidity in summer - outside my hotel room I could literally see the water condensing on the windows (19 degree inside, 41 outside, dew point around 28). Tell them to just build a pipeline. Just - where you plan to find the water?

        • You suggest they tell the UAE to use desalinated water? Even though you know they already do? Is reading difficult?

      • The pipelines would be operated by some utility, which perhaps is shy about the investment.
        The pipelines would go over land, where the owners would need to agree.
        Pumping water is not as easy as you think anyway.

        Those devices are for a specific situation. A situation that Spanish 'inventor' actually is living in. Astonishingly the water trucks, and pipelines people are suggesting here are not popping up - since decades.

  • Nothing new (Score:5, Insightful)

    by vadim_t ( 324782 ) on Thursday August 05, 2021 @06:23AM (#61658447) Homepage

    So, they made a dehumidifier. They didn't invent anything.

    Nothing new there, an air conditioner works as one, and lots of people own one for purposes like drying their basements. It might be a better design, perhaps? But all indications are that it's just a dehumidifier.

    At 15%, it'll have to use a *lot* of power to extract any moisture. Hot air holds more moisture than cold air, so to extract it what you need to do is to cool the air to the point that the moisture no longer "fits" and condenses. But you have to cool it down enough, otherwise nothing happens. Extracting all the moisture needs cooling down to around -20C I believe, but certainly one doesn't need to go that far, if leaving some moisture un-extracted is acceptable.

    Also, air holds very little water. You'll need big, powerful fans and a powerful cooling system to handle it. That's going to use a lot of power, though if you couple this with solar it might be doable.

    A question is: water for what? People don't use all that much of it, what about agriculture and industry? There can't be all that many people living in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by nothing. That you can extract the water for people to drink doesn't mean there's enough water for an useful society to exist. Food needs to be grown and stuff needs to get made.

    The issue with these things has always been the bang for the buck. You can definitely do this, the question is whether it's worthwhile. It's not going to make a whole lot of water, and so in the end it might be far more effective to explore other options like transporting it in trucks, pipelines, or seeking an underground source.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jbengt ( 874751 )

      Extracting all the moisture needs cooling down to around -20C I believe, but certainly one doesn't need to go that far, if leaving some moisture un-extracted is acceptable.

      Obviously, you can never extract all the moisture from the air. But starting with 40C air at 20% humidity, you could extract more than half of the water in the air by cooling the air to close to freezing. A more typical A/C temperature is around 13C (55F), which would condense no moisture from that air.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Viol8 ( 599362 )

      Unfortunately a lot of underground water sources around the world have been over extracted and either dried up or become saline through sea water ingress. I'm not saying this is a solution - it isn't - but aquifers are almost history in over populated dry countries.

  • The man(& the editor) - are idiots? Buy it. (Score:3)

    by thona ( 556334 ) on Thursday August 05, 2021 @06:25AM (#61658449) Homepage
    This is working tech for years. https://www.watergen.com/ [watergen.com] Or here, this nice fuel station that generates drinking water with solar energy on the side... https://www.meed.com/enoc-unve... [meed.com] " and drinkable air units that use ozonation techniques to convert water molecules from humidity in the air into drinkable water for staff onsite." Quite obviously he invented - nothing. He even says so. He developed something (as in: take established principles and made them work), which is a nice engineering task, but it is not an original thought at all. Given that he is an engineer, and given that this is really old tech, it is fraud at best (or tremendous ignorance, he must have looked up and done some research at some point). Now, the question is - would that village have been cheaper off just BUYING an unit? https://www.khaleejtimes.com/n... [khaleejtimes.com] https://esharawater.com/ [esharawater.com] Basically: Buy, plug in, DONE. No "invent", no "build". That is off the shelf technology.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by pjt33 ( 739471 )

      This is working tech for years.

      Yes, but it's Reuter's and BeauHD who are idiots for puffing up a company which got its patent in 2005 as something new (and you also look rather silly for presenting a company which was founded in 2009 as an antecessor to a company which was founded in 2004).

  • Yep, condensation exists. It's a natural occurence we call dew, too. How many hundred kickstarter etc campaigns fantasizing about it do we need? As with creating a vacuum, the problem isn't that there's no process to do it, the problem is diminishing returns. You won't make an arid region less arid by removing its existing moisture.

  • My dehumidifier handles 90 liters a day and uses electricity. Is this news?
  • You know that if you drill a hole in the ground, deep enough, it mysteriously fills with water. I wonder if Musk would be interested in backing my new venture. Vertical boring machines.

  • I'm old enough to remember USENET (Score:3)

    by richi ( 74551 ) on Thursday August 05, 2021 @06:44AM (#61658477) Homepage
    Didn't we used to call this malarkey Eternal September [urbandictionary.com]"?

    • this malarkey

      Joe, don't you have better things to do than post on Slashdot? We're still in the middle of the COVID crisis.

  • Agua potable. * flips hair *

  • It's not a dehumidifier... (Score:5, Funny)

    by PseudoThink ( 576121 ) on Thursday August 05, 2021 @07:27AM (#61658513)
    It's a moisture vaporator, and it was invented in the 1970's by George Lucas.

  • So you electricity, and you can get water. Why do they specify electrical power in Cv? Weird. Anyway, if you trust the company website, you need about 200wh per liter of water. Want to supply water to a refugee camp with 1000 people? You need around 800kwh.

    If you have a country that puts refugee camps where there is no water, are they going to have that kind of electrical supply? It seems unlikely...

    Footnote: Just for comparison, desalination requires somewhere around 10wh/liter, or around 40kwh for tha

    • Want to supply water to a refugee camp with 1000 people? You need around 800kwh.

      People will need to drink again and again, so something is definitely off in this calculation (unless you make assumptions for how long they will stay in that camp)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by thona ( 556334 )
      Unlikely like... the UAE. TONS of sunlight, VERY short on drinking water. This system uses a lot of electricity? Yes, nor compare that to desalination.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by PPH ( 736903 )

        TONS of sunlight

        And this sort of application is amenable to the varying availability of sunlight. You extract water when it's sunny and put the surplus in a tank.

        desalination

        That might be cheaper. But it assumes a nearby supply of salt water.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by thona ( 556334 )
          Which in my example of the UAE is like a given. Ever looked at a map? Hint: Dubai is one the coast. As are Abu Dhabi, Sharjah and all other major cities there.That is how they do it now - desalination. And they DO hav a water surplus (fired by surplus in solar energy) in summer which they use to feed sweet water into the age old aquifiers that they emptied with "let's do agri in the desert" years ago. THIS - would possibly work quite well there, as they demonstrate on the fuel station generating drinking wa

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by vadim_t ( 324782 )

      Given that this is Spain, Cv almost certainly means "caballos de vapor", which is metric horsepower, which is slightly different (735.49W) from imperial horsepower (746W).

      That makes the smallest one of these be 551 W, and the biggest 162 kW.

  • A moisture vaporator? This is old news. It has already been invented a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

  • As opposed to what? Fat air?

    https://instantrimshot.com/ [instantrimshot.com]

  • If it used a quantum carburetor, it might not make any greenhouse gases. And, if coupled with an Immudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator, it could really transform humanity!

  • Or do we just put up hidden cameras to see what they do when they find out that the dehumidifyer has already been invented? It should make a great meme pic.

  • What I really need is a droid that understands the binary language of moisture vaporators

  • Another release from the Spanish Ministry of Advertising.

  • ... that these summaries are written so unscientifically...
    'to cool air until it condenses into water'

    Cooling the air so it condenses would result in liquified CO2, oxygen, eventually nitrogen, etc...

    The humidity in the air, of course, is condensing at a higher temperature, ie earlier in any such process, But it's not air, though we don't often see it...

    Sheesh, news for nerds needs to be slightly more accurate, please? Hey, nerds are detail-oriented.

  • The machines use electricity to cool air until it condenses into water.

    Air does NOT condense into water. That is a stupid, inaccurate and unscientific statement.

    Its the moisture in the air that condenses onto a cold surface.

  • If you remove water vapor from the air in this manner, it cannot collect in clouds then come down as rainfall. Yes, it's terrible that arid climates do not have enough water. But giving them water will simply cause other areas to become arid. They're not "creating water from air", they're removing water from the ecosystem.

    Now if they were actually creating H2O, well that would be something worth reporting in a positive light.

  • Why would you want to do this?

    The refugee's will all die in a few days with no water anyway and the dead bodies can just be chucked in a large pit and recycled naturally. That is far more energy efficient than condensing water out of air (which was "new technology" about 5 billion years ago) because if you do that and keep the refugee's alive for some reason, then you also have the feed and house them as well.

    It is far more efficient to just do nothing.

    This will have no effect on the supply of refugee's be

  • If they can get water from thin air, just imagine how much more they could get from thick air!

  • The Israeli company https://us.watergen.com/ [watergen.com] has been doing this for some time.

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