
The Water Abundance XPrize winner makes water from air - sandyshankar
https://www.fastcompany.com/90253718/a-device-that-can-pull-drinking-water-from-the-air-just-won-the-latest-x-prize
======
mchannon
Pretty disappointed with their choice of winner. Using refrigeration to
maintain a dewpoint means that this appliance is pretty impractical below 50%
relative humidity.

Or in other words, this thing only makes water when you probably don't need
water.

Blow some nice 90 deg F 20% humid air past those coils, and you'll be blowing
out a lot of 80 deg F 25% humid air out on the other side, getting bupkis for
actual produced water, but sucking down plenty of juice. Slow down your intake
fan to almost zero, and now your water produced goes up from zero, but the
slowest of trickles.

Gotta love all that ozone generator carbon filter garbage on the business end.
It's all just bells and whistles to put lipstick on a three-legged pig.

~~~
mamon
>> this thing only makes water when you probably don't need water.

Living in California recently I constantly see the weather forecast claiming
70-90% humidity and yet the area is basically a dessert with almost no rain. I
suppose there are many more areas in the world like that.

~~~
nevlis
Sounds like a delicious place to live

~~~
romwell
You might think that, but the illusion will break fast if you actually move
here. The inland can be supper dry, so much you could almost hear it dinning
in your ears. No surprise so many water conservation efforts have been
launched here!

------
petermcneeley
I actually had a discussion on this subject with Phil Mason aka Thunderfoot
who has a Phd in chemistry and is the creator of the video that is critical of
this announcement (
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3s-xI895zc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3s-xI895zc)
)

The discussion was about how much work is actually required to condense the
water vapor. The fact is that it is thermodynamically possible to MOVE more
heat energy (Q) than work (W) applied. The efficiency of heat movement is
dependent on temperature gradient but is more than 100% efficient. So as
bizarre as this sounds it actually requires effectively zero work to condense
water from the air at 100% humidity.

~~~
mchannon
At 100% humidity, sure. If it's raining, it takes no work to get wet.

I have a unit in my garage that can actually produce water at less than 10%
relative humidity, moves a lot more air so it has more chances to actually
capture the water, and smokes these other units under price/performance,
particularly when tested in a desert. It's not a dehumidifier-based system.
It's also cheaper to build.

Email me for details.

~~~
Sephr
Details I received from emailing mchannon:

> Thanks for reaching out. Mine uses a deliquescent salt, which requires no
> energy to absorb water from the air. It's pretty messy, but does the job.
> Getting the water back out is where the energy is required, and this is non-
> trivial, but still far better than those dehumidifier approaches, which are
> unfortunately the perpetual motion machines of our era.

~~~
jessriedel
Isnt the assumption here that he didn't want to share this publicly? It seems
like a betrayl of trust, regardless of the merits.

~~~
Sephr
I never told him that I would keep his correspondence private, nor did he ask
me to do so.

Here is the entire email chain between myself and mchannon:
[https://go.eligrey.com/t/mchannon-email](https://go.eligrey.com/t/mchannon-
email)

~~~
jessriedel
That's why I said "assumption", i.e., from the context that he didn't post on
HN but would respond to private messages.

------
joshe
I don't know why this is attracting so much bitterness.

If anyone is informed about water, it would be great to get a little more
context, for example what other solutions like desalinization and other
dehumidifiers cost in energy and dollars. (Yes, obviously nothing is going to
be as cheap as putting a pipe in a river.)

For example their FAQ says they use less than half the power of their
competitors. That seems like a huge advance. And is $.02/liter amazing or just
slightly better?

~~~
mchannon
If you remember back to the perpetual motion machine, that was supposed to
produce more electricity than it consumed, you'll capture the mindset
detractors like myself have.

But look, our PMM is producing this many volts! And it works great on paper
too!

I haven't seen any data or reports to show this competition actually tested
built units and measured both their water output and energy consumed, and did
so in a variety of climates. In areas where the mercury has gotten below
freezing, for instance, _there is no water in the air_ , and yet, we're
supposed to believe these snake oil machines are producing 2000gal/day for
$0.02 each, even there.

~~~
drewm1980
RE "no water in the air blow freezing", that's not true. In the mountains you
can hang your towel up to dry at night. It freezes, then dries through
sublimation. Ever seen funny smooth ice formations?

~~~
mchannon
This sounds like a koan:

"If there is a frozen towel in the mountains, is there water in the air if
there is no one there to measure the humidity it produces?"

Assuming there were millions of frozen wet towels in such conditions, any
sublimated towel ice would rapidly drop back out of the air as frost.

------
ortusdux
Here is the website for one of the winners:
[http://www.skysource.org/](http://www.skysource.org/)

From what I can glean online, the 150 gal/day unit costs $18k usd + $150-$300
in electricity a month if run 24/7 at $0.10Kwh. Ignoring electrical costs, it
would take 1581 days to reach $0.02/liter. In that time you would use up
$7.5-15k in electricity.

The best estimate I could find is that the average US household uses 240 gal a
day.

A friend of mine had to drill a 980 ft well through bedrock. A well this deep
requires a much stronger pump and more electricity. They are on their 2nd
pump. I should ask them what that all cost.

~~~
xgbi
Are you serious? 240gal/day is 900 liters/day!

We are four people living in a house & garden in france and I used 70m3 (70000
liters) last year. That would be about 190L/d or 50gal/day, 5 times less.
Where do you dump so much water in the US?

~~~
aidenn0
My math says that's about 2 HCF (hundred cubic feet, which is what our water
is billed as) per month? That's considerably lower than the typical water
usage in drought-ridden Santa Barbara of 11HCF. It's also double the baseline
usage of 4HCF (after 4HCF rates go up).

With 3 adults and 4 children in my house we used 4-6HCF per month with no
garden (when we moved in the irrigation system used about 12HCF per month on
its own, we landscaped the yard to eliminate the need for outside watering).

------
extrapickles
It looks like the winner is a standard dehumidifier bolted to a standard
biomass generator that has a condenser from a high efficiency furnace bolted
on to it.

So the only "magic" they are doing is also capturing the water vapor from the
generators combustion. While somewhat novel in combining it all, its all off
the shelf tech.

What I don't like is the lack of good hard numbers in its performance in a
range of conditions as snake oil is extremely common in the water from air
industry.

~~~
Digory
The other magic is financial. My bet is that they assume free biomass. Once
you assume input cost = $.00, things look easy.

And, to be fair, maybe this thing makes sense after a hurricane. There's lots
of "free" biomass laying around in an area of extraordinary transportation
costs.

But it's obviously not a solution to the "water problem" in rural,
impoverished areas. You'd need to include the price of a renewable forest or
palm plantation (for coconut shells), or the huge solar array.

------
nyrulez
I'm a bit irked that a technology of this significance has no videos or demos
or actual use cases, just a PR blurb. Is it confidentiality, or is it too
early stage? Otherwise X Prize becomes another congratulatory event. This
feeling seems to run through the entire site as I click around.

~~~
azernik
The company itself has a website at
[http://www.skysource.org/](http://www.skysource.org/)

~~~
metaphor
...which tells us nothing of their XPrize submission.

~~~
azernik
It's probably 2-4 of their higher-capacity models put together.

------
CompelTechnic
Does anyone have any details about their actual technical implementation? I'm
sure it is interesting.

I imagine it doesn't look too similar to a Tatooine moisture farm.

~~~
corodra
Just google “water from thin air”. This has been done quite often the past 15
years. It’s an overpriced dehumidifier that is working outdoors.

1\. They’re in Hawaii. It’s a little humid there. So... yea. Dehumidifiers
will collect quite a bit of water in a water abundant area.

2\. The places that need clean water typically have low humidity as well. To
pull water from air, there needs to be water in it.

Think of this as all those folks that claim they can run their car on water as
a fuel. The thing they fail to mention was they were using a battery to split
out the hydrogen from the water to use that as fuel. Which is not more
efficient than just using the straight up battery.

This is a publicity stunt scam. A real shame too. That money would have been
better spent on education or better water infrastructure in places of need.

~~~
JackFr
> They’re in Hawaii.

So what you're saying is that they're efficient on an island miles from the
the rainiest spot on the planet.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Waialeale#Climate_and_Ra...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Waialeale#Climate_and_Rainfall_Statistics)

~~~
corodra
You’d figure they would test something like this for efficiency in the desert.
Just to be practical.

------
travisoneill1
2 cents a liter is not close to feasible for any sort of agricultural or
industrial use and is an order of magnitude more expensive than residential
tap water. Seems like cool tech, but I can't see how this is a solution to any
type of water shortage.

~~~
jpm_sd
I believe the general idea is to provide drinking water where there is no pre-
existing "residential tap water" infrastructure.

------
joshe
If it all works this would be useful. (Contary to all the negative comments
about how pointless this is.)

Not a water expert, but here's where this reported price ranks from some
googling:

    
    
      Tap water in California:     $.0005 / liter [1]
      XPrize winner:               $.02 / liter
      Water truck delivery in CA:  $.01 - $.05 / liter [2]
      Desalination:                $.05 - $.30 / liter [3]
      Wholesale bottled water:     $.30 / liter [4]
      Walmart bottled water:       $.68 / liter  [5]
    

If $.02/liter is right, this is close to the water truck in pricing. Also it
seems like you could ship this with solar to disaster areas instead of flats
and flats of bottled water and be up to 15 times cheaper. It could be an
alternative to desalinization near the ocean where there is lots of humidity
at 2 to 15 times expense. This seems useful.

Tap water is awesome, btw. It's 100 times cheaper than all these options.

[1] $.002 per gallon from [https://www.wsj.com/articles/my-california-water-
is-an-undil...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/my-california-water-is-an-
undiluted-bargain-1430781715)

[2] $200 for 5000 gallons to $500 for 2500 gallons for water truck delivery in
California [https://www.cnbc.com/2015/04/08/californias-four-year-
drough...](https://www.cnbc.com/2015/04/08/californias-four-year-drought-
starts-a-water-truck-boom.html)

[3] [https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-a-water-desalination-
pla...](https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-a-water-desalination-plant-cost)

[4] $1.22 per gallon from [https://slate.com/business/2013/07/cost-of-bottled-
water-vs-...](https://slate.com/business/2013/07/cost-of-bottled-water-vs-tap-
water-the-difference-will-shock-you.html)

[5] $.02 per fl oz from [https://www.walmart.com/tp/bottled-
water](https://www.walmart.com/tp/bottled-water)

~~~
tapvt
For places without existing water infrastructure, however, doesn't the
technology seem like it may have some appeal?

Not everywhere has tap water. Some places don't have an aquifer suitable for
drilling a well. Other places don't even have a road network suitable for the
delivery of water by truck in an economical manner (or at all).

Beyond that, drawing water from the air has benefit in that it does not
negatively impact a local aquifer which might already be over-drawn. What is
the additional economic benefit per liter of that? That could be subtracted
from the $0.02 / liter cost if you care to look at more than just the
immediate bottom line.

~~~
joshe
Totally agree, just edited to make myself clearer. I was actually reacting to
all the negative comments.

------
comesee
I don't get it, why don't poor communities build piping from their nearby
water sources? People were able to do this 2000 years ago. Why do they need to
invent a reverse-entropy machine?

~~~
fpoling
Ancient Roman Empire was politically stable. When this is not the case one
really needs very local water sources.

~~~
comesee
Why isn't there an xprize for politically stabilizing these countries then?
That would lead to vastly more efficient and convenient water sources.

~~~
brokensegue
Can't tell if you're joking

~~~
comesee
That means I'm probably on to something :)

------
yourapostasy
When I looked into conventional dehumidifiers and air conditioners, what
stopped me from systemically re-using air conditioner condensate even as gray
water was finding out that it can contain trace amounts of heavy metals and
industrial oils from the condensate going through less-than-ideal materials
used for the coils and evaporator parts. Also, if you live in an area with air
pollution, the condensate contains concentrates of the pollution, as well as
allergens and biological contaminants. I'm hoping someone reading this might
have looked into it more than I have, and can point me to some reading
material that can help me either further work through or dismiss those
concerns.

When I read through the article, I didn't see any links to potability test
results. So there might be a purification step after this gasifier powered
water generator to turn the output of this into truly potable water, so the
cost won't really be below two cents per liter in the field. Purification
itself is an energy-intensive endeavor, whether to create purification
materials or straight use of energy in more active systems, and is why potable
water is a rough order-of-magnitude proxy for energy.

------
08-15
"Skywater is an ideal solution for [...] Cooling Tower water recovery"

Hilarious. If it was possible to recondense the evaporated water and somehow
reject the heat to the air, there wouldn't be a cooling tower!

Thunderfoot is right, it's a scam:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3s-xI895zc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3s-xI895zc)

------
beauzero
Good video on how we see an Adiabatic Cooling process drop moisture in nature.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH_M4jItiKw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH_M4jItiKw)
edit: I personally didn't know what "adiabatic" meant.

------
apo
Here's some background on alternative approaches:

[https://cen.acs.org/environment/water/stripping-air-
moisture...](https://cen.acs.org/environment/water/stripping-air-moisture-
quench-worlds/96/i41)

------
foofoo55
Articles all state "from air" but half the system uses pyrolysis (high heat to
gasify without flame) to extract water from biomass.

See also comments on slashdot from someone claiming to be from All Power Labs,
the gasifier supplier:

[https://science.slashdot.org/story/18/10/22/079250/a-device-...](https://science.slashdot.org/story/18/10/22/079250/a-device-
that-can-pull-drinking-water-from-the-air-just-won-the-latest-xprize)

------
VBprogrammer
I might be way off base here but is that Jim Mason - Founder of All Power
Labs? In that case it hints that gasification could be part of the solution.

~~~
reason-mr
As I understand it, it is basically the skysource water extraction device
hooked to an all-power labs gassifier, which produces electricity from
gassifying organic material. Allpower's product uses the gassifier output in a
conventional engine, in turn using that to power a generator. The great part
here is - uses locally generated biomass, and produces a waste stream of
biochar, which can be used for argiculture, essentially putting the carbon
back into the soil. Pretty, it isn't, but carbon neutral it is.

~~~
VBprogrammer
Yup, that's what I got from it. But also the engine is producing CO2 and Water
from the biomass. Which can in turn be fed into the water extractor. I think
that is the novel step.

~~~
salawat
And yet pre-supposes the availability of biomass to gassify.

Even if that were part of the implementation, it'd likely be missing the
point.

------
carapace
Cf. "Air well"
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_well_(condenser)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_well_\(condenser\))

------
foxhop
Another way: plant trees in the desert and form oasis. "Watch greening the
desert" on Youtube. Basically trees cause rain.

------
Avery3R
This website is like the perfect example of that "the web in 2018" post that
was made a few days ago.

------
peter_d_sherman
Will this work in a desert?

------
luckydata
Now we just need the sandworms.

Edit: not a big Frank Herbert crowd I see.

------
post_break
Is this another one of those dehumidifier machines that promises it can
deliver gallons when using a tarp, rope, and a bucket to catch rain water
collects more water per year?

~~~
azernik
RTFA, especially before snarky dismissals: "meeting the competition parameters
of extracting a minimum of 2,000 liters of water per day from the atmosphere
using 100 percent renewable energy, at a cost of no more than two cents per
liter"

~~~
post_break
I read the article. Do you know how many of these things promise gallons and
deliver drops? Pardon me for being pessimistic about it.

~~~
azernik
They have commercial models for sale that produce half the competition
amounts, and have pretty detailed specs online:
[http://www.skysource.org/products/](http://www.skysource.org/products/)

~~~
Yver
Those specs mention producing half the competition's amount in _optimal_
conditions, which I assume means 99% humidity. They don't actually say at what
humidity level and temperature their product can deliver that much. They don't
give any specific numbers at any specific temperature, only the machine's
operating conditions and the upper limit on what it can produce.

~~~
azernik
I assume they just put together an array of two or three of their high-
capacity converters for the competition.

------
corodra
It’s an overpriced dehumidifier. Pulling humidity out of the air. It’s not
magic. It’s not new. There is water vapor in the air, every middle schooler
knows this.

They are in Hawaii. An outdoor dehumidifier will work great in a water
abundant area. How well do you think a dehumidifier will work in a low
humidity area? The places that need water the most. It’s not making water,
it’s pulling out the humidity.

This is such a scam.

I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. All these “smart” folks gave up 1.5mil and
there are tech folks here nodding their heads because it’s xprize. Y’all
turned off your thinking just because it’s xprize.

Say you want to help 3rd world poor and it gives you magic armor from logic
apparently.

~~~
explorigin
I think the approach is a bit more novel than normal dehumidifiers. Instead of
just collecting water dripping of the condenser coils, they use the cooler air
to make a "rain chamber". The website talks about "maintaining a dew point
within a condensation chamber".

~~~
stephengillie
This sounds like Persian Wind Catchers.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windcatcher](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windcatcher)

There's a similar type of building which uses temperature difference to
generate condensation within a building, creating a pool of water. The name
escapes me at the moment.

~~~
kazinator
> _The name escapes me at the moment._

Vancouver Condo

~~~
tomcam
...and scene. Might as well just close the thread at this point.

------
rdiddly
Remove moisture from the air on any significant scale, and you're depriving
someone else of rain, downwind. It's another finite resource. Unforeseen
consequences abound.

You know, there are places where water falls out of the air on its own, and if
you don't spoil the hell out of the landscape you can even drink it. Give it a
rest, humans.

~~~
rdiddly
Oh so we really believe the solution to all problems, including those directly
caused by human technology, is going to end up being more technology? That the
solution to human-caused complexity is more complexity? (With no diminishment
whatsoever in returns?) That the solution to human actions that change the
climate is more human changes to the climate? Because Progress? No skepticism
at all huh?

Nobody subscribes to any quaint notions anymore such as "Extracting water from
air is known as rain, and it's free," or "There are already too many humans,
living in too many inhospitable places, enabled by technology," or even
something as simple as "Hey I can keep two contradictory ideas in my head at
the same time like 'I work on technology' yet 'Technology always has a
downside'?"

There's an old apocryphal saying along the lines of (please say this in the
stereotyped voice of Tonto or any Native American portrayed by Hollywood): Red
man build small fire, keep warm. White man build big fire, keep warm by
chopping wood.

Just thought I'd throw that in, since it's roughly analogous.

The human population needs to be cut back to within a sensible ecological
planetary carrying-capacity, not be further propped up by ever-more exotic
tech. The cutback will happen regardless, when these technologies inevitably
fail or lead to worse problems that feed back on each other. But it's still
frustrating that everybody wants to just rush headlong into the brick wall
instead of hitting the brakes, and that anybody who has any foresight is
automatically some Luddite or old-timer. Like people fresh-out-the-womb are
the smartest ones, and the unquestioning belief in tech is anything but
gullibility! Give me your money then!

