
Dry Water - tacon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_water
======
djrogers
Apparently one can make dry water with a blender - mix fine silica powder and
water in a 1:19 ratio (by mass) and put it in a blender for a few minutes.

I'm not going to risk my blender to try it, so who's first?

~~~
gvb
Blenders can be replaced. I would worry more about silicosis.

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

~~~
TimTheTinker
Or pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. Been waiting for 25 years to
use that word seriously. :)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilico...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis)

~~~
eganist
You've just unironically and contextually used what's currently the longest
recognized word in the English language in an unforced manner.

There has to be a prize for this.

~~~
somethingroma
I'm sure it gets used at dry water research meetings all the time.

~~~
ethbro
Only the ones with a sense of humour.

~~~
Fellshard
I hear they prefer deadpan dry humor.

~~~
bacon_waffle
_cough_

~~~
cerberusss
For a minute, I thought I was on Reddit.

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arayh
This appears to be a relevant patent:
[https://patents.google.com/patent/US20040028710A1/en](https://patents.google.com/patent/US20040028710A1/en)

Many are asking how to liquefy dry water. It is stated that you can liquefy
dry water upon embrocation at the time of use. I assume this means applying
the dry water to your skin and applying pressure and rubbing it.

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tylerchilds
The patent getting snatched up by cosmetics and then re-discovered almost 50
years later makes me wonder how many cool advancements have been lost to
industries that couldn't find any value from them.

~~~
tinus_hn
In many fields there are waves with the patent expiration cycle, for instance
3D printing or VR.

As the patents expire there is a flurry of new research, everyone obtains new
patents and it becomes impossible to create viable products again, until the
patents expire and the cycle begins again.

~~~
TimTheTinker
That's very interesting, especially considering that patents were originally
created to incentivize people to publish details of inventions so they could
be publicly known and accessible in perpetuity.

To better uphold their original purpose, perhaps the patent rights period
should be shortened to 6 years or thereabouts.

~~~
gutnor
Patents are only a problem for technologies with successful application.
Ideally, once you have covered the R&D cost, it should be free for all.

Technologies without successful application is the interesting case. With
patents, like in this case, they are locked for a while, but at least someone
can pick them up. The alternative is to become lost in the archive of some R&D
department.

That said, that's difficult to say. We have patents, companies haven't had to
find a way to live in a modern world where obfuscation, secrecy are the
primordial part of their DNA. Would we have had OSS before, or not at all? I
guess that NDA and anti-compete contract laws would be much stricter maybe at
a stifling level, medieval guilds style.

~~~
btilly
_Ideally, once you have covered the R &D cost, it should be free for all._

Not unless the R&D cost includes all of the R&D into unsuccessful products
that didn't get productized.

Also complicating the debate is pharmaceuticals, where you're also covering
the cost of FDA approval, clinical trials, etc. Per
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_drug_development](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_drug_development)
this cost comes out to several billion per successful drug among established
players. (A single drug is several hundred million, but most drugs fail.)

~~~
perl4ever
It seems like an unjustified, kind of Panglossian, assumption that all of the
unsuccessful research was necessary and that the returns from patents are
exactly equal to the necessary costs. Markets are powerful optimization
machines, but that is too often taken dogmatically to prove we are in the best
of all possible worlds.

~~~
btilly
I didn't make any such assumption. I just said that if you only cover R&D on
success and fail to cover typical failures, people won't have an economic
incentive for doing R&D.

In fact the returns are higher than the necessary costs, including the costs
of the failures. That is one of the reasons that pharma is profitable.

However what this also means is that big pharma lobbies hard for long patent
terms. And when they get them, then other fields, such as software, have to
put up with them.

------
zw123456
I wonder if it would make a good fire retardant. The water would heat up and
make steam and burst out along with some CO2 trapped in it.

~~~
barbegal
It wouldn't be as good as Aerogel [1] which is a similar silica nano-particle
based structure. It contains air as opposed to water so conducts very little
heat.

[1] [http://www.aerogel.org/?p=1929](http://www.aerogel.org/?p=1929)

~~~
Hasz
Except that aerogel, classically, is incredibly unbelievably fragile.

There's now composites out there that are supposedly better though.

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maxander
I wonder if this sort of silica coating could be an alternative to lipid-wall
cells for silicate-based extraterrestrial life.

~~~
s0rce
I assume you mean cell membranes (cell walls are in found in plants, fungi and
bacteria and made from polysacharides). However, it seems like an impermeable
wall is less the issue than trans-membrane structures which facilitate
selective transport of different species (ions, molecules, etc).

~~~
bonoboTP
What does species mean here? I haven't seen this usage before.

~~~
s0rce
Chemical species, basically just another term for a specific molecule/ion,
there is a specific definition and it is apparently a bit more specific than
what I thought:

[https://goldbook.iupac.org/html/C/CT01038.html](https://goldbook.iupac.org/html/C/CT01038.html)

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

------
ynniv
Also see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_powder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_powder)

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user5994461
It doesn't say how to get the water back from the powder.

~~~
s0rce
You could distill it off just like you distill normal water. Lowering the
surface energy might also be a possibility. Might be able to introduce a
powdered surfactant and then mix a bunch. Should then wet everything and you
can sediment out the solids.

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Aardwolf
> Scientists consider that dry water will prove useful in the future to help
> fight global warming as it was found that it could store as much as three
> times more carbon dioxide than ordinary water over a similar length of time.

But which is more expensive? 3x regular water, or 1x dry water?

~~~
semi-extrinsic
It's moot in any case, as nobody is considering storing CO2 by dissolving it
in water. Supercritical fluid is where it's at.

~~~
bopbop
Sounds interesting - Do you have a link for that, or if you've got time could
you explain?

~~~
semi-extrinsic
There's a lot of literature on this; Wikipedia has a decent starting point:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_sequestration#Geologica...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_sequestration#Geological_sequestration)

TL;DR: if you compress CO2 to above 73 bar, it becomes supercritical fluid,
which has a density almost like water and which does not mix with water. If we
inject this fluid into underground saline aquifers, we can trap it
indefinitely. Basically exactly the reverse of producing oil and gas. In this
case you're transporting and injecting pure CO2, not water with 0.1% - 1% CO2.

It's been done at large scale since the mid-1990s, so we know it's viable.
Lots of research and development on details/optimization still to be done, but
we know it will work and we know we can scale it up.

~~~
rthomas6
Could we combine this with some kind of carbon capturing process to reduce
existing CO2 in the atmosphere?

~~~
semi-extrinsic
Long term, yes, that's exactly the plan. Short-term, it's going to be CO2
captured from large emission sites - powerplants, chemical processing
industry, cement and steel factories etc.

Just because the CO2 concentration is so much higher in exhaust/flue gas,
10-40% versus 0.04% in the atmosphere, it's much more cost effective in the
next 50-ish years.

------
daferna
Throwback to the greatest debate of all time:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPDdRrMVEnA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPDdRrMVEnA)

~~~
orf
This is amazing. They both give pretty compelling arguments.

Can anyone else throw anything else into the ring? Is a fish wet?

~~~
qudat
There's water in the air, so everything in the air is actually wet based on
that line of reasoning.

~~~
orf
So fish are wet by virtue of _everything_ being wet?

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mullikine
We must message Cody to ask him to please make and consume some dry water, for
our sakes. As he has already done with heavy water, last year...

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXHVqId0MQc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXHVqId0MQc)

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jamestimmins
"It can be used as a medium for volatile compounds, as materials stored within
the dry water can be reduced to powder and stabilized – reducing not only the
volatility of the substance, but also its weight for transport."

Anybody know how it's possible that adding an additional substance to a
chemical compound could _decrease_ it's weight? Or does it just mean that less
volatility means it can be transported in lighter containers?

~~~
umvi
Assuming it's referring to lowering the density. Powder is less dense than
liquid.

~~~
jamestimmins
But doesn't that just mean "It weighs less when you carry less"? That sounds
like a truism.

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dgudkov
Huh, the dehydrated water in Space Quest actually isn't that much of a joke.

------
userbinator
_Dry water also has applications for the transportation and storage of
dangerous materials. It can be used as a medium for volatile compounds, as
materials stored within the dry water can be reduced to powder and stabilized
– reducing not only the volatility of the substance, but also its weight for
transport_

That reminds me of how acetylene is stored for transport --- dissolved in
acetone, which is then absorbed into a porous nonflammable substance.

------
barbegal
My understanding is that to produce dry water all you need is a fine enough
super-hydrophobic substance. It doesn't have to be silica but we know how to
produce hydrophobic silica nano-particles.

The main property it has over traditional water is an increased water-gas
interface which means it can absorb more gases and absorb them at a faster
rate.

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lalaithion
Can you eat it?

~~~
diymaker
Given that it is coated in silica, my guess is no. It would be like eating 5%
sand.

~~~
nathancahill
So just a normal picnic at the beach then?

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DINKDINK
Seems potentially useful for applications where you need a really high
specific heat but different viscosity properties.

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jondiggsit
What happens if you add liquid water?

~~~
julienchastang
Reminds me a of a quote from Steven Wright the American comedian: "I bought
some powdered water, but I don't know what to add."

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DonHopkins
Now I'll have to get a Dry Water Dryer to go with my Hot Water Heater.

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tjmc
Seems reasonable that you could also create dry heavy water. Could that be
useful as a moderator for nuclear waste if mixed with powdered radioactive
material?

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SmellyGeekBoy
OT - but what is with all the idiotic comments in here?

~~~
kbart
You are not helping by posting another pointless comment (or do you really
want to start another round of endless 'HN is becoming reddit'?). To express
your disapproval, just use downvote instead.

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thedirt0115
Ok, stupid question time... can you turn it back into regular water, and how?
"Just add water?"

~~~
s0rce
I'm not sure whats normally done but I answered this above. You could distill
it like normal water.

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umvi
How does one reverse this process?

~~~
jiveturkey
clearly, you run the blender in reverse

------
mcphage
> Dry water actually consists of 95% liquid water

95% by mass, or by volume?

~~~
djrogers
Mass

~~~
mcphage
Thanks!

------
huhtenberg
One step closer to Dehydrated Water from Space Quest I, an essential part of
the Survival Kit... as I'm sure many of you here undoubtedly know.

~~~
maxxxxx
On hikes I always think there should be freeze dried water.

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jhabdas
Backpacker arrested in the middle east in an anpparent attempt to smuggle
beauty products once thought to contain explosive substances through a
security checkpoint at the Qatar airport.

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acjohnson55
How stable is it?

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DyslexicAtheist
me: "water is wet."

internet: not necessarily, ...

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Synaesthesia
I wonder how hard it is

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ncmncm
Next they'll tell us there's such a thing as "wet towels".

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thehnguy
My vitamix spins fast enough . . .

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mycall
Do Not Eat

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willis1314
interesting description

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irrational
This reads like a joke wikipedia article. Does anyone know if this is
legitimate?

~~~
dmitrygr
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2010/08/27/what-
is-d...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2010/08/27/what-is-dry-
water/#43c089e24eaa)

~~~
willis1314
interesting description

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jacobush
The opposite of silica gel...

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wemdyjreichert
Powdered water... Just add water.

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mrfusion
Would this be useful for terraforming Venus?

