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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

Contains a "novel desiccant material that has exceptional adsorption properties."

But no mention of how much the material costs and how long it lasts. Is this another one of those new surface chemistry materials that doesn't last long, like the ultra-black material, the ultra water repellant material, and the exotic salt water desalination membranes?

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This sounds like a retooling of the dessicant air dryers [0] that have been used for years in industrial compressed air systems.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_dryer#Desicca...

That's not the novel part, the novel part is thermally connecting the regenerating and saturating sides. I think the tldr is that the regenerating side is evaporating and thus cooling? The work input into the system (aside from fans) is the vacuum pump.

They're using vacuum to dry the desiccant; the mechanism to seal the two chambers well enough to pull a vacuum seems like a high failure point.

The vacuum may pull the shutters against seals during the regen. So the shutters would move freely with the vacuum off, then seal tightly during the dry cycle. You would need filtration to protect the seals, but compliant seals assisted by vacuum draw would probably be okay.

Ah! They are using vacuum thus inputting energy to move the regen and sat sides around otherwise this would have a distinct whiff of ‘perpetual motion’ about it.

I was skeptical but had missed that bit!

Sounds like the Tech Ingredients guy’s desiccant-based DIY AC system:

https://youtu.be/R_g4nT4a28U

You could probably build something similar using zeolite (if that's not already what they've using). The form factor undoubtedly matters but there are existing water absorptive materials that are long lasting and effective.

The video talks about a metal-oxide framework; no idea of the lifetime of them but they seem to be the cool new tech used in everything at the moment.

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