Device that can extract 1,000 liters of clean water a day from desert air revealed by 2025 Nobel Prize winner — claimed to work in desert air with 20% humidity or lower, delivering off-grid ‘personalized water’
www.tomshardware.com
The system can function in air with 20% humidity or less. But these 1,000 liter a day machines are not small, at around shipping container size.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/59925291

The system can function in air with 20% humidity or less. But these 1,000 liter a day machines are not small, at around shipping container size.

  • FauxLiving@lemmy.worldEnglish
    59·
    2 days ago

    As someone who has thought about it, could you provide the data that you used to come to the conclusion that the amount of water being extracted from the air has any appreciable effect on local life?

    From my thinking…

    Death Valley covers 7800km^2.. Atmospheric moisture is typically contained in the first 10km of air. So there is somewhere around 2.5 quadrillion cubic feet of air containing 114 billion gallons of water.

    The average Atmospheric Water Vapour Residence Time is around 8 days The median is 5 days and Death Valley’s topography is a valley which would trap more moisture, but we’ll use the average instead.

    This represents a moisture turnover rate of about 625,000 Liters/second (or 1.45x10^10 gallons/day).

    So, one of these devices would consume .000185% of the moisture that enters Death Valley every day.

        • KaChilde@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          111·
          2 days ago

          You are assuming that there will only be one device used by a careful and considerate individual.

          I can think of many companies that would 100000% set up a moisture farming complex if it was financially feasible. Who gives a fuck about the environment? It’s basically free water from nothing, right?

          • FauxLiving@lemmy.worldEnglish
            3·
            1 day ago

            Nobody is deploying these at scale to harvest water to sell, it’s way too expensive. Probably even more so than desalination.

            These kinds of devices would be useful in areas where they didn’t have access to preexisting infrastructure. There the comparison would be between operating one of these devices or air lifting water in by helicopter. The fact that it’s expensive isn’t as much a concern when the alternative is to pay for airlift delivery.