6 karma · joined March 13, 2015
If the goal is to provide clean drinking water in emergency situations, then this could definitely help. If the goal is to provide a sustainable source of clean water for a large population, then this is not the solution (there's a pun in there somewhere).
I really like the idea of having open source infrastructure. I would like to see people build open source electric vehicles, farming robots, membrane bioreactors, etc. For the naysayers, at least two of these are already a thing: https://www.osvehicle.com/ https://farmbot.io/
Let's see how far these things get. Open source software has come a long way but there's a whole host of challenges with open source hardware projects which we haven't solved yet (open source toolchains for designing said hardware, open standards for modularity, collaboration tools, etc.). The only way we're going to overcome these challenges [and discover the ones we don't know about yet] is to try it.
To that end, I'm glad that this project IS relatively simple -- I think that increases its chances for success, especially considering that this is uncharted territory for most of the team members.
Moreover, there does seem to be a market for these things: http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/global-at... and I would expect that the cost of energy should eventually go down as we develop less naive means for generating energy.
I'm all for it. Work that dehumidifier.
TL;DR The meta problem of open source hardware is interesting in and of itself.
Agreed that it'd be better not to freeze the water at all, but that might be difficult at low dew points.
If you're not going to be in a particular area for very long, digging a well might not be an option. An AWG can collect water while you're moving -- all you need is access to air.
If you find yourself in an area where the water table is contaminated, using an AWG may end up being the safer option.
Imagine you're living in space (or a similarly resource-constrained environment): you've got multiple people losing something like 0.5+ L/day (citation needed) to the air through perspiration -- that's valuable water. Moreover, to keep people comfortable, you should make sure your relative humidity stays below 60% (citation needed), so you're going to be pulling it out of the air anyhow. NASA undoubtedly has these systems in place in space, but that doesn't mean we should develop a open source version of the equipment that everyone can collaborate on and improve.
TL;DR Sometimes you're willing to trade energy for water. Also, open source.