Turning Arabian Desert air into bottled water | Hacker News Reader

Turning Arabian Desert air into bottled water

bloomberg.com

25 pointshhs40 comments

Speaking of water and desert, I have an interesting anecdote to recount.

My wife's grandfather, Ugo, an Italian army officer and engineer, served in Ethiopia and then during WWII as part of the "genio" (logistics) unit.

At some point during the war he was stationed in the desert (I think Libya), where the Italian army was supposed to either attack or mount resistance against the British troops. Well, the Germans had to somehow take over control, because the Italians were poorly organized and managed.

One day Erwin Rommel [0], "the desert fox", shows up at the camp. Consider that this was a camp in the middle of the desert, defended by the Italian garrison and probably some german troops too, with no refrigerators for food, etc.

He examines the place and the troops, and then the Italian commander offers him water to drink. To Rommel's surprise, the water was icy cold. He couldn't believe it. The commander introduces him to Ugo, who then proceeds to show to Rommel how he ingeniously created a system to cool water by using water evaporation in metal bins, and the power of the hot desert sun.

Ugo was impressed by the encounter, shared it with his son, who then shared it with my wife and then with me.

I thought this story was worth sharing.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Rommel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaporative_cooler#Application...

The persian qanat/windcatcher architecture would be easy to spot well after the fact, but although we do know the spaniards in Alta California would hang woven bags in their courtyards to promote evaporative water cooling, because textiles decompose so quickly we wouldn't have known if all we had were their ruins.

https://www.moonrandolphhomestead.org/homestead-journals/201... is an example of something which my great grandmother had told me about, but I've never seen in practice.

(one of these days I hope I may put into practice the knowledge about how to safely crank-start an automobile.)

And then there's this from Australia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coolgardie_safe

These were very common sight hanging off bull bars (mostly trucks) when I was a kid:

https://www.collectorsweekly.com/stories/228740-australian-o...

I dunno if it is just an Australian thing.

Spaniards use a porous clay container designed to cool and contain water since the bronce age. It's named botijo.

It works like a charm in summer, it acts as an evaporative cooler.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botijo

as if spain and spaniards existed back in the bronze age! Surely that technique must be known elsewhere as well.

In the western US, a canvas water bag works nicely for this. I remember my disappointment showing up for work one summer to learn that my employer had discontinued them for fear of spreading disease.

If they really want to give people the experience of drinking water in the Desert they should do what the Army did and sit pallets of water bottles in the sun so all the Soldiers could get a nice, plastic-flavored, scalding hot drink of bottled carcinogens.

I imagine that the risk of death from enemy fire was a bit higher up on their 'what will kill me' priority list.

It was Kuwait so there was no enemy fire. Actually, for most of the conflicts in US history there were more casualties due to illnesses and other health issues than enemy fire. IIRC the Gulf War might have been the first time that wasn't the case. I just think heated plastics causing cancer was just something they hadn't caught up with.

Napoleon was generally thought of as the first time were violent casualties exceeded non-violent ones. At least until his march to Russia.

In the US the Civil War in the 1860s was when violent casualties tended to exceed medical ones. Even then, disease was a big deal, even up to WW2 where malaria was a huge problem in the Pacific Theater.

There’s no way this is cheaper than just shipping water from other parts of the world.

I don’t even believe that “comparable to Fiji price”

They even admit in the article it's less efficient than desalinization, which is itself hard to make efficient.

If interested, this is the company’s website: https://www.zeromasswater.com/rexi/source/

And this provides funding info: https://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/news/2020/06/23/zero-mas...

This reminds me of the Fontus bike water bottle (that didn't end well) https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/fontus-the-self-filling-w...

Whilst it doesn't seem very cost effective - I imagine it's quite a good marketing gimmick for 'eco' bottled water?

There are similar products that generate water as a byproduct of airconditioning (which is a must in a desert climate). I know some guys that are selling these in the Middle East and mining operations in the Aus outback.

https://seas-sa.com/awa-modula-systems/

Every time anyone tries to sell you something that pulls water from air, dismiss it offhand. It’s a scam. Often by a startup with zero math skills. It’s scientifically impossible to do without massive amounts of energy, and never worth it.

Atmospheric condensers? Kataan would be proud.

Probably one of the best TNG episodes.

Also Uncle Owen, if we go back a little farther and across franchises.

Hugely inefficient and expensive, but if the energy used is renewable I guess there's no downside. Certainly seems to be more environmentally friendly than desalination which disrupts sea life in coastal waters.

There's still externalities to be considered, even if the energy is renewable. But even accounting for that, I don't see why something like this would be preferable to just desalinating ocean water and transporting it via some method.

Unless I'm missing something with the energy needed to pull the water out of the air, or they've made a huge leap in miniaturizing the tech... this whole idea is a non-starter IMO.

It is a question that can be addressed quantitatively with two thermodynamics questions. Size matters not.

How many joules of energy are required to extract a liter of water from the air (average dewpoint, temperature) at the site in question compared with the number of joules of energy required to remove the salt from a liter of the available seawater?

Desalination has the additional problem that you need to dispose of all that salt somehow. You can't easily dump it back into the ocean without risking the local ecosystem. It needs to be diluted over a fairly large area. That adds some cost.

But it seems like this is more of a novelty and targets rich people, like bottled glacier water.

So here is my doubt if there is a Air polluting source nearby how does it affect the quality of water? What happens to the pollutants like carbon monoxide , nitrates present in air. They might get dissolved in water at the time of condensation?

I assume the water will be filtered. There's a reason air conditioner drippings are not recommended sustenance.

Efficiency is the only thing I can think of as explained in the video by thunderf000t here https://youtu.be/aPvXnmBIO7o

There's still a downside, in that it takes more resources and more energy to get that water than just shipping it.

Pipes are very, very efficient.

Sure, but pumping still takes energy. Not to mention the cost, monetary and environmental, of building pipes from the nearest (very ample) fresh water source in.. the mountains of Georgia?

Yes. But pipes are very, very, very efficient, and cheap, high-throughput, and has very low environmental cost.

> I guess there's no downside

Just opportunity cost.

Not necessarily inefficient.

If you use transverse flow heat exchangers the "cold" is not lost but maintained in the condensing area, so that little thermal energy escapes.

Totally feels like the Dune’s Fremens!

Oh no. facepalm Another: What are the laws of thermodynamics... Every couple of years people will fall for this particular scam. Listen, you can never ever do this in any way that is even close to efficient, especially in arid regions, because physics.

This will make a nice thunderf00t video, unless he got tired of debunking these projects

It seems to me that Boy Scout Manual told one how to make a "solar still" to condense water from the air. But it has been a while since I had a copy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc7WqVMCABg

Unrealistic scam.

Another unrealistic project.

LOL, these guys do not know about thunderf00t!

This is not possible.

But what would be interesting is if scientists actually watched what happens.

They have done this with cults around the 'end of the world' type scenarios.

How the cult leaders and followers react when the impossible doesn't happen can be psychologically useful to know.

I haven't read this book so don't recommend it, but I think it's cool it exists - https://www.amazon.com/When-Prophecy-Fails-Leon-Festinger/dp...

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