Hi Peter
It is called a 'de-humidifier' - only it collects the water . Not a
terribly efficient unit by the sounds of it - the energy numbers are vague
- and the effectiveness at low humidities (when you wouldn't run a
dehumidifier anyway) will decline very steeply. If it was driven by solar
alone - (obviously you wouldn't need it if you had hydro!) - it might work
- but the time it would work best would be at night when the relative
humidity of the air rises steeply (think dew) - there have been a number
of these touted around in the past year (Philip Adams was raving about one
such early this year) -
Nothing new - just cuter - and has UV and filtering - and another energy
sucking device on the richo's kitchen wall...
Hugh
>Hi Hugh,
>Try this:
>Water from air
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/nov/23/water-mill-eco-invention
>- Peter
* Ed Pilkington in New York
# guardian.co.uk, Sunday November 23 2008
Water, Water, everywhere; nor any drop to drink. The plight of the Ancient
Mariner is about to be alleviated thanks to a firm of eco-inventors from
Canada who claim to have found the solution to the world's worsening water
shortages by drawing the liquid of life from an unlimited and untapped
source - the air.
The company, Element Four, has developed a machine that it hopes will
become the first mainstream household appliance to have been invented since
the microwave. Their creation, the WaterMill, uses the electricity of about
three light bulbs to condense moisture from the air and purify it into
clean drinking water.
The machine went on display this weekend in the Flatiron district of
Manhattan, hosted by Wired magazine at its annual showcase of the latest
gizmos its editors believe could change the world. From the outside, the
mill looks like a giant golf ball that has been chopped in half: it is
about 3ft in diameter, made of white plastic, and is attached to the wall.
It works by drawing air through filters to remove dust and particles, then
cooling it to just below the temperature at which dew forms. The condensed
water is passed through a self-sterilising chamber that uses
microbe-busting UV light to eradicate any possibility of Legionnaires'
disease or other infections. Finally, it is filtered and passed through a
pipe to the owner's fridge or kitchen tap.
The obvious question to the proposition that household water demands can be
met by drawing it from the air is: are you crazy? To which the machine's
inventor and Element Four's founder, Jonathan Ritchey, replies: 'Just wait
and see. The demand for water is off the chart. People are looking for
freedom from water distribution systems that are shaky and increasingly
unreliable.'
For the environmentally conscious consumer, the WaterMill has an obvious
appeal. Bottled water is an ecological catastrophe. In the US alone, about
30bn litres of bottled water is consumed every year at a cost of about
$11bn (£7.4bn).
According to the Earth Policy Institute, about 1.5m barrels of oil - enough
to power 100,000 cars for a year - is used just to make the plastic. The
process also uses twice as much water as fits inside the container, not to
mention the 30m bottles that go into landfills every day in the US. But the
mill also has downsides, not least its $1,200 cost when it goes on sale in
America, the UK, Italy, Australia and Japan in the spring. In these credit
crunch times that might dissuade many potential buyers, though Ritchey
points out that at $0.3 per litre, it is much cheaper than bottled water
and would pay for itself in a couple of years.
There is also the awkward fact that although there is eight times more
atmospheric water than in all the rivers of the world combined, it is
unevenly distributed. Those areas of the US that are most desperate for
more water - such as the arid south-west where ground water levels are
already dramatically depleted - have the lowest levels of moisture in the
air.
The mill ceases to be effective below about 30 per cent relative humidity
levels, which are common later in the day in states such as Arizona. To
combat that problem, the machine has an intelligent computer built into it
that increases its output at dawn when humidity is highest, and reduces it
from mid-afternoon when a blazing sun dries the air.
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