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Another tech can help solve water shortage, using Nanotech, check out UA-cam video from "Undecided With Matt Farrell": Tittle "How Nanotech can help solve the Water Shortage". I want to copy and paste here, but UA-cam doesn't let me.
Funny no one’s though of the dehumidifier idea I had all those years ago. Yea water making is damn slow as hell but the electricity it needs would be more cost efficient I think. Make the same item and just add a filter to it
Have you measured the condensation water output of your heat pump? While I doubt it would satisfy all of your needs, i bet it could supply a significant fraction.
This video covers the most expensive and impractical ways of collecting water from air, while neglecting the most practical methods of extracting water from air (and other places). The most practical/economical way to extract water from the air, is to let nature do the most energy intensive step (of condensing the water out of the air). For people that don't live in foggy regions where fog nets may work, the most practical way to do this is to install rain gutters on your house roof, awnings, barns, sheds, solar arrays, etc., and then channel rainwater into large volume storage containers (such as big plastic containers like 275 gallon IBC totes or larger, and/or an in ground swimming pool with a cover installed over it, and/or a custom built cistern). The water collected should then be pumped up to pressure with an electric pump, and then filtered with a sediment filter, a carbon filter, and then a UV water sanitizer. Further filtering with a reverse osmosis unit, followed by a re-mineralizing pack is desirable for best water purity and final taste, but is normally non-essential for safety (unless contaminated by algae and/or radioactive fallout, in which case the reverse osmosis stage is highly recommended), if the water was already filtered through a carbon filter and UV water sanitizer. The equipment needed to do all of this in a basic and relatively small system can generally be had for less than $1000 (assuming you use DIY labor), and will generally produce vastly more average annual water output (even in desert locations), compared to vastly overpriced equipment like the "Zero Mass" air/water extraction devices. Ordinary air conditioners also produce non-negligible amounts of condensate water when running, especially when set to a very cold thermostat temperature. For common whole house AC systems, the condensate water normally collects in a tray under the cold side heat exchanger (often located in one's attic space or wherever the air handler is located). Typically, the water collected is wasted by being piped to a drain that goes into the household sewer lines. One can modify the plumbing on the drain line, so as to instead divert the condensate water to a storage container, whereby it can be purified with a carbon filter and UV sanitizer. Although condensate water is normally fairly clean, it can contain dust from the air and possible traces of mold from the cold side coils on the air conditioner, so it is still preferred to post filter the water with a carbon filter and UV sanitizer before drinking. Trying to obtain large amounts of water in this manner will be very electricity energy intensive however, as it is fundamentally the same as what the grossly overpriced "Tsunami" systems described in this UA-cam video are doing. A far more efficient way of collecting water is via a rain catchment system, but capturing incidental air conditioner condensate water is something that is potentially somewhat interesting, if you are primarily running the air conditioner for home cooling purposes, rather than for water capture purposes. The water produced requires far too much electricity to be economically competitive with other water obtainment methods, but when incidental water is captured, it is essentially a "free byproduct" of cooling off your house with the air conditioner. Although not "from the air", grey water capture and recycling is also more practical, compared to most of the schemes described in this UA-cam video. Making potable drinking water from grey water is feasible with a sand filter, a charcoal filter, a sediment filter, a carbon filter, a UV sanitizer, and a reverse osmosis based filter. This can be done both at small scale in a residential setting, and at large scale, and it is fairly economical overall. Some municipal fresh water utilities in water starved cities in the US already do this for meeting some of the city's water needs, by using "reclaimed" water as the input water source. The "reclaimed" water is sewer water that has been treated by a municipal sewage treatment plant, prior to subsequent filtering (including the most important step, the reverse osmosis purification). Cities that do this usually don't like to advertise that they are selling you recycled sewer water, but it is nevertheless still being done in some cities where there is not enough nearby surface or groundwater resources available to meet all of the city's fresh water needs directly. That said, fresh water produced via reverse osmosis filtration will normally be much cleaner and more pure than normal municipal water derived from surface water sources, even if it is recycled sewer water. Wells and sea water desalination (if you have access to sea water) will provide much more reliable and abundant water, compared to trying to capture water from the air, but there are many ways to produce clean drinking water, and they are not mutually exclusive with one another.
Yes. Way too logical though for the Moisture Farmer wannabes. (I tried to explain it in a previous videos comments but Ricky here really wants to show off this water from air gimmick for some reason….)
As somebody that drinks rain water, you dont really need such a sotisticated filter. A simple filter works nicely. If the water is in a dark place, thats all you need. We also buy trucks of water from time to time, so the clorine of that water may be cleaning the water from micrones, but the water have never tastes to chlorine to me
Quite a few places with low precipitation have surprisingly high humidity. For example, the fog deserts of Chile, Peru, Baja California, and the Arabian Peninsula. The California coast and Central Valley also get lots of fog.
use a rain roof to collect rainwater. grey water recycling, and farming practices that conserve water and promote plant growth (many examples of this in north Africa, India, southwest US, etc.)
Start by reducing consumption. I Cape Town we have been through a recent severe drought. Lots of great ideas have been around for reducing consumption. 20 gal per day per person is fairly easy to get to. Rain water collection, water wise gardens, grey water harvesting. No treatment is necessary if these waters are only used in the garden.
How is this different from dehumidifiers? I'm not a huge thunderf00t fan but he has several videos "debunking" a lot of claims of systems like these as they're not much of an improvement over traditional dehumidifiers. I would be interested in hearing your counter to these type of arguments.
They are dehumidifiers in reverse. This work great in South East Asia not death valley. Vapor pressure and relative pressure I know this plus wongs. Fog nets supper sponge but everyone is still in labs.
There is a small scale that is at any big box store. Just get a dehumidifier. And have the outlet go to external storage. Then you have to do your own filtration from there but you can get water from air for just over 100 bucks. This will not be making enough to support your daily use or for the household but in a pinch when you need water from the air this is how you can do it on a budget.
I appreciate you posting this, but we've had functioning AWG for years. The most crude version is water dripping from an air conditioner unit. People have talked about de-humidifiers and drinking the water from those. There are battery powered solid state cooling devices that can be used to keep food cool on trips, and if they cool below the dew point, can generate water. Someone posted a funding request for a windmill with additional solar panels to run an AWG in remote areas. But the single biggest problem there is people smashing those things so they can sell the scrap metal. But again, appreciate you raising awareness.
popped in just to say the same but I already see a fellow commenter posted this ahead of me :) If I am not mistaken there have also been AWG systems in place in some ancient cultures
yeah, the condenser systems are old and inefficient. the new hydrogel and mof systems work differently though. very importantly: they work at low humidity levels which condensers have problem with. they also use much less electricity, as explained.
Southern Africa has been having some good results from burying clay pots down about 4' under the surface it has APVC pipe up that collects the air and I believe each day it will deliver 11 quarts. The new atmospheric nets that they make that drain into a communal system could help look up Southern Algiers. The biggest thing is people need to factor in quit wasting water
The atmospheric nets are in their infancy imo. When its fully developed, we could theoretically reforest entire deserts with the correct implementation. The "lack" of water is really just an illusion
I have a dehumidifier in the crawlspace with a 70 pint capacity. In summer it fills up almost every other day, in winter I don't run it as the radon system keeps the space dry enough. It is amazing seeing the amount of water coming out of the air!
I had a small computer shop on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. I had one too! It produced literal gallons per day and had to be emptied continuously. I had a lot of plants and they were well-watered! I was dumping the rest. Should have used it to flush to toilets!
During the monsoon we are having now, I filled my 70 pint tank twice yesterday. I've been using my dehumidifier in an outdoor shed that is well ventilated. Power usage was around 16KWh used over 16 hours. In my area that's about $1.90 total electrical cost for 17.5 gallons. I think I'd sooner buy a fleet of Frigidaire dehumidifiers than buy even one of these "mil-spec" priced contraptions. Think about it, ten $300 dehumidifiers can make 175 gallons/day when its humid or about 15 gallons/day when it's dry, so $3K vs $30K or $50K.
@@instanoodles You have to see the difference as long as you are not in the desert or Antarctica there are a lot of water in the air. (Where do you thing clouds and fog come from). What is BS is when you say that you can get it a lot nearly for free. You need lots of energy or very special conditions like morning fog (rain is the real easy way). What is given is that small devices with low energy consumption in dry air do nothing.
Love the pool heat pump idea. Have you thought about a multi-tier system? Think about these add-ons. What about using a cistern system to catch rainwater and use it for non-potable things, such as washing the car, dishes, watering the lawn and adding water to the pool. You can then use the water in the pool to provide water to the toilets. The idea is to reduce drinkable/potable water to that used to drink, bathe and washing dishes. This would significantly reduce water that would be produced by these systems thereby reducing the energy needed and the amount of water needed. We used a 55 gallon pickle drum to collect water at my house for washing the car and watering the lawn and plants. It was amazing. Just after I installed it we a rain that could only be described as a mist rather than a rain. I thought we were going to need a real rain to fill the drum, but that mist filled it in about an hour. ?!? Cistern systems really could reduce the demand for potable water.
I remember the problem about desalination ... As I was in South France, Spain and also saw this in Thailand ... build the unit near a salines (salt harvesting area) and offer them the already higher salt water ... To take the water in the air will ALSO have other long term effects on the climate or sure regions as less water, also less rain. So Salinas might be better way, as first get drinking water, and after get salt and force more water to evaporate !
@@TheEmbrio Yeah, I forgot, that between the desalination unit and the salt evaporation area should also be a rare mineral unit, taking advantage of the minerals in that water also. As I saw this days a battery based on natrium instead of another rare mineral, a win win for everyone in that chain.
I recall reading about a greenhouse system which uses seawater taken from two points at different depths. Basically the windward facing side of the greenhouse has a simple woven netting which is saturated with seawater taken from the top warm seawater intake. The warm salty water drips down the netting and evaporates as the wind passes through the netting. The sea salt stays in the netting and can be easily removed by simply wacking the netting with a carpet beater when it becomes clogged. The sea salt can also be packaged and sold. The water pumped from the second intake of colder seawater taken from deeper in the sea runs through a system of small gauge metal piping positioned above the plants in the greenhouse. The highly humid air condenses on these pipes and drips down onto the plants. It was claimed that these simple and cheap poly-greenhouses could employ 20 people and feed their families and provide enough excess water for those families while still producing enough fresh produce to be financially viable. the pumps run on solar power needing only a few panels to maintain the electric needs. Unfortunately this will only work if you are near a sea.
I think Desalinization is great for a small usage. And yes can sell the By product until everybody has one. Then there be too much by product to be useful. Right now the DeSales station plants are dumping nearby product back of the ocean which sink’s to the bottom of does grate harm to the Ecology of the ocean. Small scale it’s fine but for the large scale of the World scale shortage of freshwater just too much waste product. They talk about Getting all the minerals out of the waist using it and batteries. But that would only be a fraction of would be able to use.
This might be the 'Seawater Greenhouse' from Charlie Paton. Nice system, good for poor areas without drinking water, it helps for carbon storage (one of 60 finalists out of 1100 participants for the Elon Musk 100 million dollar X-prize). There are installations in Australia that are working well. A new project is placed in the West Sahara (hotel in the middle of nowhere).
@@carstenschoellner2886 Yes that's quite possibly the one, although if memory serves me correctly, it was about 15 or maybe even 20 years ago that I read about this. I never really followed it up to see if it was being implemented. Thanks for sharing that.
This one got som of the pieces of my puzzle growing in sahara to fall in place so I needed to come back and finde your coment to thank you. 👍 We don't need to be close to the osian to get this to work. If just there is plenty of water and there is most places.
The big question for me is what happens to the atmosphere when humanity around the world uses these technologies. The potential changes to ecosystems would probably create the next global crisis as areas around the world would blame other parts of the world for their water shortages.
I agree, i.e. removing water from air in a large scale would dry the environment and make it easier for forest fires to happen, also not only humans but a miriad of creatures need this humidity to live and thrive.
Indeed, in many places, the water in the air doesn't belong to you - it belongs to the government. Just as you can't dam a river passing across your property and sell the water, you can't pull the water from the air. In fact, they won't even let you save the water that falls from the sky! When I lived in New Mexico, the catch basins that had been used by the original owner to store rain were required to be filled in with rubble and capped, and the rain water diverted away from the basins.
@@HansSchulze If everyone stored the rain water, much less would make it into the rivers and aquifer. This would mean less water for the government to turn around and sell back to you. No free water for you! How dare you even think of stealing from the government! :) Water in the US southwest is serious business. In the old days, personal wars were fought over it. In modern times, the government strictly controls all water, especially now that it is growing more scarce.
So what I'm hearing is that we need a transparent hydrogel coating for solar panels that can absorb water during the night and then evaporate it off during the day to cool the panel.
Good Video! Even here in Washington State, people take water for granted. Glad you guys are getting some rain, at least I hope it's getting down your way.
Use of greywater and other conservation methods means you can cut the 300 gallons/day down significantly. This angle needs to be part of the discussion.
My buddy had a 75 gallon tank in his back yard to collect rain water, and also the water from his washing machine, to feed his garden. That is a practical way to collect some water for your garden. A 1 KW well pump can produce over 100 gallons per hour to feed the horses on the farm that I lived on for several years in San Diego County.
DIY idea: a hollow backing behind your solar panels. Blow are through the system to cool solar panels (improves efficiency), then run that warm air to a closed system below or around your pool to cool the air. Then to a condenser that extracts the water. Think of it this way. Condenser/heat exchange unit in the middle. Hot air comes from roof. Cool air from the pool/ground.
One other way to save on water - turn off the shower, while you apply shampoo and wash yourself, don't water your lawn, use a dishwasher etc. but as long as water is so cheap and few people will care I guess.
It is said that necessity is the mother of invention. On opening our home to a family fleeing the invasion of Ukraine by their neighbouring war hungry Orcs, we suddenly found that our solar system was struggling to maintain sufficient hot water for two families. We asked another family who had also provided a safe home for refugees, how were they able to deal with the extra demand for hot water. "Military showers for everyone", was the answer.💙😉
Since you are in San Diego, and near the ocean, consider this: Forty foot high towers above the maximum high tide level (actually a U shaped pipe) in which the South side is black and the north facing pipe in the shade is white. A near full vacuum is created at the top of the tower (loop). The sea water essentially boils on the sunny side, and fresh water condenses on the shady side. Pumps push the fresh water to holding towers while making sure that the tower pipes do not go dry. Salt concentrations will go up in the local area, but sea life will likely evolve and adapt to that environment. Also, at night fresh water would condense on the South side pipe which would help keep salt build-up from being a problem. As far as natural condensation nets, I have found that if I let my pasture grass grow, I do not need to water and it stays green until late July, to early August. My back yard is now just starting to turn to straw with one variety and good seed heads. Another variety is still rather green and just starting to dry out on the seed heads. I've not irrigated at all this year, and I live in a high desert.
I once heard of an idea for water desalination, don’t know how well it would work: you build a long thin “mini-greenhouse”, say two feet wide and tall and a mile long. A salt-water trough runs down the middle, from which water evaporates. It recondenses on something (what would work best?) and drips into shaded and partially covered collector troughs running down each side.
There are problems with solar desalination of ocean water, one of which is that it is full of nutrients and algae. Microscopic plankton and algae will grow abundantly in the sun exposure of the supply water trough, producing a concentrated slime that will gum up the trough as the water is evaporated away. But it is possible to separate and collect the algae growth as a biofuel source. A large-scale system needs to find ways to prevent this biofouling.
@@mrtechie6810 Make the center trough out of a pipe and cut the top off so it looks like a c. Then clean it regularly with a piston you pull through it. You could use multiple pipes side by side to increase top surface area.
How about 2 ft wide and a mile long solar panels, and just boil the sea water to vapor right at the input. Eliminate the long troughs. Have periodic (daily?) automated scraping/cleaning of boiling chamber.
Your final note on using the swimming pool as a heat sink for the cooling part of a condenser does sound intriguing.... until the pool gets so hot that you need to start cooling it! I'd like to see the math on whether the condensation you manage to achieve is wiped out by the elevated evaporation due to heating the pool. Or simply factoring in how much water you need to keep topping up the pool to counteract normal evaporation in the first place.
When there is no water to truck in, the cost doesn't seem so important anymore. Thunderf00t is just chasing a buck which causes him to cherry pick, exaggerate, and sometimes misconstrue the facts. Please stop watching him.
@@Seibar42 on the ones I've seen, he projects realistic use and cost and show how foolish these things are for general use. Even this video reveals this. Look at the minimum daily yield on the dehumidifiers at 5:41 ...0.5gallons for a huge power consumption. The nets shown only work in foggy areas, on a foggy day. That's not common, especially in areas with scarce water. Gel may be more versatile, but not yet in production, so hard to say. But its yield also varies depending on humidity and temp. Guess where it will yield the least?
The answer is no. Most of these things are scams, not only are they inefficient but are almost always conditional. If the air isn't humid it takes more energy and time to get more water. The places that really need something like this are often not very humid in the first place. It's less energy efficient than to ship the water into the area and it always will be if transportation moves forward in efficiency. Don't forget, the fog nets require fog and light winds. In all other cases they do nothing. In most areas fog is a very rare occurrence and it's usually with little wind. If any water from air harvesting methods actually worked and were implemented on a large scale, I'd be worried that we'd get less actual rain since we'd be dropping humidity levels. It would probably only be minor but still a real concern. Perpetuating this shows a real lack of scientific knowledge in my opinion. They're on par with other large scale scams, like solar panels and electric cars. They're interesting and fun but are not more efficient when electricity prices are as high as they are and the upfront cost and maintenance cost (of solar and electric batteries over time) is very high/doesn't pay off the investment.
@@tedmoss TRU-DAT, but if EVERYONE was using/doing it, I'm sure that there is a point that there is ZERO left in said air & then the DIY in your back yard users, produces less & less the more the total number of unit online increases. I'll wager that "dustman" was pondering on a grander scale, outwards to the degree of ""WILL THIS BE ABLE TO CAUSE/PRODUCE A SHIFT IN THE NATURAL FLOW OF AIR ACROSS THE PLANET"" since all things in nature want to be EQUAL and a large population area using this technology & extracting every bit of H2O now triggers a deficit so is it all of the ADDED GREENERY that returns its water first, trees & grass & the like or will it trigger an influx from other areas and thus create new and different air/wind flow patterns that end up causing havoc on some other part of our meek little existence on this third rock from the sun?!?!?!? P.S. Just look at the increased level of skin & lips & finger tips that are cracked & split during the winter months with its lower available humidity. Could we be doing this on a much larger scale??? Just another lil point to ponder.......MR
Yeah, Coastal mountains take all the rain as it is. If you start large scale humidity harvesting on the coast the interior loses rain & has more evaporation.
Really interesting video, especially during the early stages of a drought here in the UK. Something I wanted to comment on though was your figure for the average U.S househould's water consumption at 300 gallons per day. Here in the UK that figure is around 80 and elsewhere, in Israel for example, nestled in the arid climate of the levant, that figure is closer to 50 gallons. These technologies have an incredible amount of potential but the U.S really ought to seek to reduce their usage at the same time. The smaller Tsunami-500 unit could potentially provide enough water for 4 average Israeli homes, yet it can't even produce enough for ONE single average household in the U.S? You really don't need that much water and places like Israel will be better equipped to deal with a lack of water in the future where the U.S will really struggle to come to terms without acclimatising first.
I would argue just using desalination and then building water pipelines or other transport methods for a vast majority of situations. You would have to do an energy analysis of one process against the other to really understand the difference, but I believe desalination is many times more cost effective and easier to do in bulk. I think in certain situations, like if you were to make a hyper-efficient air balloon using renewables where travel is slow and producing water in the air is convenient, or if you are at a high elevation where the transport cost offsets costs, then due to the scenario it may be a better choice though.
Why add the complexity of transporting water from ocean to land when there is an ocean already in the air? If the water can efficiently be condensed then let Mother Nature transport it for us.
@@ljdavick there are a number of issues with scaling something like that, and in reality it is a scenario by scenario basis where you have to look at different options to see which is more cost efficient. In the current status, in a vast majority of situations I think desalination with transport infrastructure is multiple times more cost efficient. In specific high altitude areas it may offset the cost enough to be worthwhile though. In the real world you are supposed to analyze different options and run optimization equations according to your environment to identify the best option for the scenario. That is how basically all infrastructure engineering works, and while I haven't worked on that specific kind of engineering I would guess they have logical equivalent systems... though I seriously doubt they are actually used to give people optimal infrastructures. Most likely actual engineers are ignored despite having the ability to solve the issue and business people and politicians will decide based on what is most convenient for them in most scenarios
@@noisycarlos you are talking about brine, or dissolved brine in waste water. That would only happen if you specifically chose to put the waste back into the water in unhealthy amounts. Normally you would send it elsewhere to be either processed into different products or disposed of as solid waste. * or if you had system leaks
I live in Houston TX USA. A couple years back we replaced our central air conditioning unit with a heat pump and moved the primary condensation drain from the domestic sewer to the outside (Just reroute the pipe out side). The heat/ac unit is in the attic. Then I bought a 55 gallon food grade plastic barrel and ran the condensate drain into the barrel. Initially, I planned to use the condensate to water my potted plants. Well, after 7 days the drum overflowed. The ac produces over 7.5+ gallons of water daily. That's 225 gallons water monthly. Understanding we live in a high humidity area other areas might not see the same results. I plan to use the water for a 50 ft raised bed garden. Water water everywhere, we just need to learn how to find it.
Places like San Diego have very little humidity although it seems to be increasing slowly as a climate warms where you need the water the most is Desert communities that have the least amount in the air
Coastal deserts like Namib and Atacama are not only old and very dry but are coastal deserts they have coastal fogs that blow of the ocean at certain points in the year. Mist nets are the easiest way to passively collect water ...based on the behaviour of key plants and beetles.
Have you lived in San Diego? The normal dew point would average above 55F most of the year, so there actually is a lot of moisture in the air, mostly because of the warm and moist breeze coming off of the ocean. While not as humid as Florida, it is not a dry area, like Phoenix AZ. But even the most energy efficient dehumidifier, the Santa Fe Impact 155, will make 155 pounds of water from air that is over 60% RH and 72F, per 24 hours, while consuming about 1 KW per hour, that is 9 gallons of water while consuming about 24 KW of power! That is not energy efficient way to get water, when a 1 KW well pump and drilling down 85 feet will produce 100+ gallons per hour of very tasty water. Not to mention that water condensate from a dehumidifier or air conditioner will have a lot of mold spores, and other things like dust and contaminates in the water. Not drinkable water until processed.
I live near Toronto in Canada and I have my down stairs toilet receiving condensate via a condensation pump with my dehumidifier running all day I get 2 flushes. Good enough for my teen son. Lol
"Uses 7 kilowatts per hour" -- correction, the kilowatt is an instantaneous consumption unit, so to find out per hour how much it adds up to, the unit would be then kilowatt-hour. So the correct way to express that would have been "Uses 7 kilowatts-hour per hour" or by simplification "Uses 7 kilowatts".
This kind of sloppiness about units is very annoying to me too.. I can't figure out what he's trying to say when he says 17kW per hour. That makes no sense at all. I've seen flyers from our local electricity utility making these kinds of mistakes... 😪
There was also the inconsistency with 7.5kWh/day in the narration but graph said 7.5kW (about 10:22) but later the kW were multiplied to get 100kWh/day (12:00ish). I'm guessing the 100kWh per day is the answer that makes sense but that is a huge amount of power. Trying to keep the rough order of magnitude of the numbers in my head and they are randomly being multiplied by randomly inconsistent units.
English isn't my native language but 7kw per hour is saying the same as 7 kWh. Where you get your hour per hour which would make kWh-squared I don't understand
@@bzuidgeest I don't think it is easy to explain in english. More of a maths thing. I'm going to make an English mess trying to explain. Sorry. The "per hour" implies division by hours so 7kW per hour is the same as 7kW/h which isn't that useful (maybe powerstation ramp up or something). We would use "for an hour" to imply multiplication. Think of a kW as "fast". We could charge "fast" for an hour to get lots of energy (Joules or kWh) in the same way we could drive fast for an hour to get lots of distance. It doesn't make sense to drive fast per hour.
For many people a simple water collection system from the rain off your roof with a sizable storage could be enough for your cleaning needs, while one of the systems you talked about could work for drinking and cooking. We waste drinking water on washing ourselves everyday.
I’m definitely most into those nets. I aspire to build a homestead cabin in my 30s and while those industrial Tsunami ones would be fantastic scaled up and energy efficiency optimized for communities, those nets and gels (I can’t really imagine too much use out of the gels though, not sure why) would be awesome for a cabin. I’d still have a well and a rainwater system obviously, but, it’d be great to have that extra diversity and take some load off of the groundwater as the shifting rains dry new ground out, especially since plants in my experience don’t really use humidity as much as we’d think. Awesome stuff with seriously low impact, I love it.
I know what a dehumidifier is, just popped in to see what the take on it is/was here. Just buy any dehumidifier then get a small filter system to treat and filter the water. Your good. The filter system would be the key due to the nature of it and having to literally force the water through the filter. How about a geothermal style condenser that uses water cooled under ground in a grid to condense water from the air. The trick would be figuring out how to power the small pump. I guess that would need to be done via solar panels and batteries. But I am thinking maybe convection might also work if you ad in back flow valves to keep the water flowing in a loop. I just bought a large flat style HVAC coil and am planning on initially using cold well water to air condition my work shop. Later I want to use a under ground cooling loop instead of the well water. I am betting the well water at 50 degrees may act as a dehumidifier so I will need a drain, a drain is already built into the HVAC coil so I could collect that water, filer it and then drink it. but do not need to. In the end places that are vary dry concerning humidity and have no local rivers, that would be a difficult place to pull water from the air. Those places are were this water out of air is actually needed.
EDIT: What I'm getting at is of that 300 gal/day the majority could easily be replaced with lower "quality" gray water. Honestly a "divide and conquer" approach is the best way to go about it. Gathering gray water (rain runoff, water from ACs/dehumidifiers, etc) for non-potable uses, while reducing usage through high efficiency machines (for clothes and dish washing) and closed loop showers for people/pet washing. You only need potable levels of filtration for a small amount per day, usually in the 10-20 gallons range for a house.
The Source Hydropanels at the end actually produce less water than just leaving a bucket with the same x/y dimensions outside to collect the average rainfall in most US cities, if you average it out over a full year. 8 litres (each panel's cited maximum daily output) is about 2.11 gallons and I'm led to believe that Wal-Mart will sell buckets that hold more than that for way less than $3000 each. You can make your own bucket-feeder system to catch rain for a home storage tank (which presumably you'd need to buy as well to make proper use of any of these systems anyway) for a steal by comparison... or just set up your house's whole roof into a funnel run-off system instead and save on buckets.
Rain capture is out right illegal in some states, in others it's actually encouraged. Last I looked it's illegal (or regulated) in most of the south west. Edit: For example San Diego is limited to a single 50 gallon rain barrel per residence regardless of number of occupants.
@@Shindinru Well on a state-level, California's only limit is the Rainwater Capture Act of 2012, which seems to mostly just limit it to being used for landscaping needs (gardening, etc). No US state bans rainwater capture outright anymore although in the past it was the case that it was banned in some states.
It would be interesting to see how well each of these work in someplace that is truly dry, like Yuma, Vegas, or Bakersfield. Maybe a head to head competition to see which can produce the most water in a 72 hour period. Limit each to a system sized at less than $100/month cost for energy and amortized capital cost. If the manufacturers truly believe in their claims, they should welcome that chance to prove themselves.
Yep either a couple off the shelf dehumidifiers or some of the roof top solar dehumidifiers should provide all the potable water his family needs, then reuse grey and rain water like you said for everything else. It will make for an interesting plumbing project if anything!
It's so nice to come to an informative and entertaining channel which has videos which do not have that awful fashionable annoying and distracting music over the voice. Those videos will not age well, but these on this channel, with just this wonderful voice, will be timeless treasures. Thank you.
I have a Rheem Protera 303L/80 freedom gallon’s ;) heat pump water heater. I haven’t measured it but I imagine this would be a much more efficient route as you heat your water it draws in you warm moist air spitting out cold dry air and waste water. Basically a dehumidifier for my basement. I would love to figure out how I can recirculate that in my system. Or just use it in plants in the summer.
As someone that works in Water Treatment, it should be noted that the water from all 4 of these technologies would produce un-mineralized and undisinfected water. This means that you really shouldn't drink it and you can not interconnect it to the standard water grid. That doesn't even factor in power to pump collected water to holding or to pressurize holding to your 2nd grid. Community scale water treatment has many advantages to homebrew. More cost effective desalination (MIT's new system or ocean vapor collection) will blow the socks off of any in-home appliance.
I disagree. And many doctors would agree, I'd bet. Hygiene is very much needed for survival. Imagine never having clean clothes and never showering. Your health would decline far faster than you would think.
@@Nic3GreenNachos Your perspective is based on the made up world we currently live in. Reality is that there are no showers or cars or grocery stores or anything that doesn't occur naturally without all of the infrastructure we have built up over hundreds of years. All of which would crumble in a matter of weeks if an EMP bomb took out the electric grid. REALITY is harsh. Today's people don't know how to find food and actually know little about what food is. If reality ever asserts itself, 80% of the population would be gone in a couple of months or so.
I just watched your video, water from air. Judging by my own experience, I think a lot of air conditioning is needed by humidity in the house. It seems that these more passive techniques can assist with this. For regular AC, dehumidifying uses close to the same energy as AC. If we could incorporate a dehumidifying system like these, we could lower the need. Even if the net needs charging, it would certainly be much less. That would certainly be handled by solar. I don't really understand how to use the gel, so not so many ideas. What do you think?
I put a temporary extension tube on the drain tube of my A/C unit and send the water to a drip system for my front garden, keeps things alive at least when rain gets scarce during the summer, and prevents the muddy puddle right next to the house (which couldn't have been good for the foundation).
I’ve noticed that our on demand water heater drips quite a bit of water (condensation not a leak) so it’s now also watering our herb garden via a bucket I empty a few times a week.
Back in the early 1970s, when I was in Forestry school, I read in a book something to the effect that as much water flows over the state of Arizona in one week as flows down the Mississippi river in a month, so this doesn't surprise me.
My family and I have lived in Thailand for about 13 years now and we purchased a condensation electric water system which produces all our drinking water for a family of three. The unit consumes about the same power as our refrigerator and the cost of the unit 12 years ago was less than $1000. We have solar power which produces most of our electric needs. We have saved a lot of money not buying water and have not consumed thousands of plastic bottles. The unit produces a max amount of 16 liters of water/ day.
Its very simple. Areas with low humidity have limited fresh water, areas with high humidity usually have plenty of fresh water. That's all you need to know to understand how pointless this technology is.
It may be a small amount, but take the waste water condensation pipes from your home AC and store that. It may not add up for home use, but may aid in watering a garden.
I like you analysis. I looked into capture nets in the past 10 years. I live on the coast that has fog nearly every morning so it seems ideal. However, afternoon wind is quite rough on the equipment and sunlight breaks down the nets quickly. Then there's birds.. finally filtration is still needed.
Id put them on rollers, that are rolled in during the day and rolled out at night, that could even be part of the collection process, few birds fly at night, so both problems solved, you could also just put out cheap netting permanently to stop birds that ae early risers flying into the capture nets.
@Digital Music Hobby The nets work all day and night with as low as 4% humidity, you don't store them away. It uses the sun to heat up the fabric on one side and the wind to cool and condense on the other, your ideas won't work.
Uncle Owen on Tatooine was a water farmer. All you need is 200 foot of pipe (6 or 8 inch PVC) sloping down to a tank . Say start a foot above ground, and have the tank 10 foot down or deeper. Have a second pipe coming up from the tank with a SLOW fan pulling air through, the humidity will condense on the cold (60F) underground pipe, and run down hill to the tank. A small pump and pipe to get the condensed water out is the last part. This will be distilled water so do NOT forget your vitamins and minerals . Don't thank me, thank Uncle Owen. Owen Lars was a human male from the desert planet Tatooine who worked as a moisture farmer.
This is one of the subjects I've been looking into the fog net. Seems the best, self sustainable, cheap and no electric required option out there. Look forward to your progress and updates. Thanks for sharing 👍🇬🇧
Rain water collection would be a better and cheaper alternative most places. Even in the Arizona desert it will cover your needs for long stretches of time.
A fog net made from natural fibers will slowly rot from being constantly moist, until it falls apart and has to be replaced... A fog net made from plastics will gradually degrade from ultraviolet rays from the sun, releasing microplastics as it debonds, until it falls apart and has to be replaced.
@@DMahalko it a water collector, not a water cleaner. You don't collect water from a river or roof and just use it. Material degradation isn't much of a problem. Distil what you ingest. Cheap, low maintenance and able to provide relatively clean water. Sounds like a win to me.
One thing to consider, typical consumption numbers include flushing toilets and washing dishes. The important part is how much a person needs to consume, and possibly cook with. The rest could use any water available.
There is a difference between the amount of water you need versus what you'd typically use, I suppose. So from just a survival aspect, you wouldn't need 300 gallons per day. For some applications like flushing your toilet, perhaps there are other options like reusing Ggrey water rr even a composting toilet.
Yes. The real answer includes a lot of water conservation. For personal use daily, we could be using just a couple gallons of water showering, a couple for cooking and cleaning dishes, and a couple for consumption (on a typical day). We could and should reduce use for purely non-food (ornamental) plants, like lawns by a lot. Note also that piped flush sewers were an invention to allow more growth and disease-reduction in cities in the mid-1800s. That doesn't mean they're a solution forever. Perhaps we should consider solutions where we don't mix good fresh water with our dung? Maybe robotic drying and collection systems?
No worries; Fritz Schlunder (above) says you just drink your sewer water after running it through a filter. Problem solved! Piss never tasted so good...
In S. Florida we have the opposite problem. Getting rid of water in the air in the house. So not only do we have an HVAC system, we also have a dehumidifier. The dogs prefer the condensate to even the ground water from the well. If we are lucky, we can keep the RH down to 50% but both units will be producing gallons of water per day. I also use it as needed for top off water for the battery bank.
I’m interested in scaleable water systems that can have impact far above individual needs. I think this is going to become one of the key planetary issues of this century. I’m looking forward to additional development in this area, great video, thanks.
It's already happening. Check out morroco they are using the cloud catchers to provide watter to distant arid areas making huge improvements to the people living there.
@@autohmae- Israel's seawater desal is Not cheap enough for mass agriculture in open air. But that is mainly because plants in open air are incredibly wasteful of water and solar energy.
@Ray Miller - Be on the lookout for an emerging technology called The Updraft, which imitates Nature's way of squeezing water from air and even improves on it by producing power, too. Both on quite a large scale.
@@YodaWhat depends on the country, for example the Netherlands uses only 10% of the water of many other countries. So it's a matter of knowing what to do and how. But I agree, we should transition to methods of using less water where possible.
I recently git into an argument with one of my oldest friends who lives in San Diego, and it was all over him insisting its just a drought and will end soon, me insisting this is different from all the droughts he's experienced over his 50 years in SoCal. This is something different. This is climate change.
Loving your videos. Keep up the great work. I was unaware of the tidal generation of electricity being already used. I have shared many of your videos to my Facebook. Hopefully, your information will be shared and become more widely used.
Given one of the properties of aerogels is (when dry) they’re incredibly light, it strikes me that 33kg might need a huge amount of space - some of the lightest are around 160g per cubic meter, with others being ~1.5kg per cubic meter So depending on how dense it is, 33kg could take up anywhere from 22m^3 (pretty big, but might fit domestic house plots) to 206m^3 (huge, likely not feasible domestically unless you own a farm)
I drilled my own water well less than 25 feet deep for under $500. I hand pump it, drink it and water plants. It currently costs nothing but it also builds biceps. I take 10 gallons a day from it. It should make more after deepening to 17 feet. Add a solar electric down hole pump should be ideal. I think we may use in the house 20 gallons a day!
No 😀 (even if these were feasible and my money says none of them are except maybe the nets in very specific environments ) The water doesn't just vanish. It remains part of the cycle and eventually returns to the ground or atmosphere after being used by people.
And to add to above; if we were to reduce the moisture content of a section of the atmosphere, it would simply absorb more as it is normaly at an equilibrium to which it will attempt to return.
The planet is too big, it cant affect it. It's like saying humans can change climate, it's just too big for little humans to have an effect on it. Any 1960's teacher would have told you that, it's so obvious.
Here in New Zealand almost all houses in the rural area do not have a town supply. We collect our own from rain water or stream or bore, most of us realize the importance of water conservation, the idea of using over 300 gallons of water per day for the average house is insane, yes some of these technologies look valuable. however the more frugal use and ensuring the system is in good order would go a huge way to alleviating the problem. A change in the ecosystem of housing would also help a great deal, I know some areas in the US are already doing this.
Have you ever used a dehumidifier? Have you ever tasted the water from a dehumidifier? It's nasty but anyway I wonder about the hydro gels. How do you extract the water? Do you squeeze it to release it so there has to be some kind of electricity used at some point so there's that cost too, right? I don't know. I'm very curious about the hydro gels. I don't think the nets are going to be all that practical. Can you imagine if you live in an area like I don't know San Francisco somewhere along the coast and everybody on their roof has a as one of these net systems? I don't know if that would be acceptable from a Civic standpoint.
heat releases the water. so it can be done passively, like in the example he discussed of the sun releasing the water during daytime. Or, what he didn't really discuss, is a hybrid system which uses some electronics to heat and cool the system to get many cycles in a day, instead of just one.
I live in the driest state of Australia which is deemed the driest continent on earth and one suggestion for desalination of seawater made decades ago now to overcome increasing demand for potable water was the following. It was proposed that large floating structures resembling an Archimedes screw could be anchored at sea near the coast where wind and tide could be employed to raise seawater up the spiral. It was suggested that the seawater could be sprayed outward when it reached the top causing a relatively fine spray of salt water to evaporate causing dissolved salt to precipitate out and fall back to the sea. It was suggested that this would artificially elevate humidity content for air carried inland against a range of hills nearby to the east every afternoon due to the 'sea breeze' effect where orographic effects would result in increased rainfall.
This sounds great...especially the fog net (I think it's the best of the three). I'm wondering though..."How will the use of these systems affect the atmosphere/local weather?" If many persons in a given locale are using the system(s), would that compromise the possibility of rain hence, the water supply to the rivers etc.? 🤔 Scale up to an entire country or continent using these systems, then...😯 That's taking the rain before it falls. This may exacerbate water shortage 🤷🏽 What do you guys think? 🤔
It would affect rain in other places just like wind mills affect the air movement of places down wind of them. You could argue that this is controlling where the rain falls so less gets waisted but then that could lead to more water wars too.
If enough are placed along coastlines, then inland areas will get a lot less rain and moisture. Most likely making the problem worse as lakes and rivers dry up.
Existing Fog Nets are used in just a handful of places like high cliffs, at Coastal Chile which are known to have fog daily for about 9 months of the year. There is simply so much fog, being blown inland by strong coastal winds, there there is no chance of "running out" of fog. The Fog nets would be catching not even 1% of 1% of the available fog. "Theoretically" if enough people had fog nets, might it be a problem at some far off future date ? Maybe. But very few parts of the world have exceedingly low, almost zero rainfall, while also having very VERY high fog levels. Like all day all night 9 months of the year dense fogs.
@@KiwiCatherineJemma Wow! I did not realize there was so much fog for such an extended period in any area! 😳 If such a miniscule amount is harvested, then...point taken 👍🏼
I installed a heat pump hot water heater last year and collect the waste water from my unit. I currently produce 5 gallons a month (average) and have it stored for emergency water purposes. Since I make BIOCHAR I can use that to filter the heat pump water if needed. Nice presentation.
Great video! yes.. I would love you to review the mini desalination units that Manoj Bhargava talks about in his documentary?? It seems like they could be floated up and down the coast of California to refill some of the ground water that has been overtapped to prevent saltwater intrusion. Love to hear your thoughts on that.
The first one might work during the day when the sun shines and the wind blows, especially when it comes to public water supplies. When the grid is overloaded with solar&wind power, utilise the redundant power to make public water.
The simple fact is that places that have trouble getting water often lack the level of humidity needed to make water condensers effective. Places where you can collect water "out of thin air," it's typically massively abundant. The only way that I could think of an aerial condenser system being a good idea would be at sea, where you could build a massive scale condensor project to collect moist sea breezes, ones that would be unlikely to turn into useful land rain on their own, and then dumps that water into storage tanks to be transported inland where they need it. You could perhaps do this in the various seas around the Middle East, for example.
Another great video as always! IMHO, California needs to invest heavily in renewable powered desalination/lithium extraction in conjunction with fixing the Salton Sea one way or another... Since there are 11 lithium extraction operations proposed for the area using renewables as well it seems like one the largest environmental "crissatunity" moments for California in its history... Also SMR's since nuclear itself isn't the issue. It's what to do with all that still radioactive "waste"... Then again, the French have mastered that with reprocessing/recycling/transmutation and glassification of low and medium level waste.
Maybe instead of wasting energy in these crap solutions. You could just fix the bad water management rules in California or remove those idiots farming in what is basically a dessert. California has enough water, it just lacks people being smart about it's use.
Nuclear "waste" has been exaggerated by the news and politics. It's never been an issue. You can easily store it above ground in silicon and concrete casks.
One additional cost to factor into water extraction systems compared to a community water connection is that in the latter the water arrives under pressure. So with the water extraction system, it at least has to be mounted up high, or you need a pump. Not insurmountable, but just something to include.
The only thing I can think of is the 20 year warranty of near constant use and they haven't scaled up, or maybe they are looking to sell them to a Saudi prince or something 😅
Here in Tucson we have salt cedars that were brought here over two hundred years ago. When they are small they get fresh water from the ground but when they get really big they rely on the water in the air.
Aside from the title being clickbait, none of these solutions is going to be the silver bullet. Water depends on the local climate conditions and cost of each method. A multipronged approach is needed (from least expensive to most): - Conserving water by planting lawns with low water use plants, leak repair, better toilets, etc. - Large storm water collection projects. Collection systems dependant on weather are unreliable: $230 - 260 / acre-foot - Brackish desalination: $840 - $1,200 / acre-foot - Non potable reuse (may cost more due to infrastructure): $550 - $1,200 / acre-foot - Indirect potable reuse: $1,100 - $1,600 / acre-foot - Desalination for extremely arid areas: $1,900+ / acre-foot Source: The Cost of Alternative Water Supply and Efficiency Options in California, October 2016 Also check out reallifelore's "How Las Vegas Exists in America's Driest Desert"
I had never heard of fog nets or super sponges. Thank you! There are plenty of other methods too; you could do a regular series with content for years. One system that comes to mind from decades ago (sorry I can't recall the name) is basically an aqueduct the desalinates along the way. Picture a sealed duct, transparent on top, with a partition running down the middle. The transparent top is sloped towards the fresh water side. Salt water is pumped into the other side. As the salt water flows down the aqueduct, sunlight warms the water so that it starts to condense on the top. The condensed water rolls down the slope to the other side. By the time the aqueduct reaches its destination, the salty side is dry and the fresh side is full. The salt needs to be scraped out periodically, and some energy is required for lift stations. But most of the energy for desalinization comes from the sun.
This canal could run east-west (or west-east) to focus solar energy on one side of the canal. The partition could be as close to the shaded bank as possible to allow the maximum of solar energy to be imparted on the salty side. The flow of salt water should be tuned to leave a brine that will still flow in order to prevent having to scrape salt out. The brine could be deposited on large flats to reflect sunlight back into space and mined when technology has advanced to a point where extracting rare earths from the salt becomes viable. The sunny side of the canal should be lined with low albedo (carbon black) fractals to maximize energy absorption. To avoid having to pump salt water in (corrosive), the canal should flow away from the ocean, which means fresh water should be tapped as soon as viable to avoid having to pump all of it from the canal's deepest point. It would be even better to condensate and catch the water vapour high enough so gravity can be used to distribute it. This way we can do away with the partition all together. It does require a taller structure.
Being in our nature to mess things up, how many of these systems would it take for us to dry out the air to the point we reduce the normal amount of rain? Imagine it would be orders of magnitude higher than I can imagine, but an interesting question. Thank you for the great content.
desalination can be done without power input (other than ambient heat) flood a field to a shallow depth covered by a clear slanted roof. water evaporates condenses on the roof and rolls downhill to a collection point. mush slower than using a boat load of electricity but it works best in areas that are dry and hot, which is also where the most water is needed. after several cycles of flooding and evaporating - collect the salt left behind as a bonus
You should REALLY watch some Thunderf00t's videos about past "miracle" water-out-of-air companies (that all failed). It's the basic thermodynamics that does not agree with using electricity to cool and condense water out of air. You even list the numbers yourself, although I have an impression that you don't grasp them: an 11 kilowatt machine running nonstop rocudes a few 100 liters of water per day. The cost of electricity (which you avoid in your final "cost calculation") is ENORMOUS. It would be the largest (by far) consumer of electricity in households ever. It would quickly turn the water shortage into a severe energy shortage (not solving the water shortage at all). I am hugely disappointed by this video (having enjoyed some of your videos in the past).
Also don't forget that when one person takes water from the air, it's not instantly replaced. If you had a whole neighborhood full of these devices they would all be struggling against each other and the total water production per unit would be much lower
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The big problem with all of these is the same problem that there has always been. The primary places in the world that have water shortages just so happen to also be the places in the world that don't have a lot of moisture in the air. Notice how the condensing machine say 0.5 to 8 gallons per hour? Most of the places that actually need water are going to be condensing much further towards the 0.5 gallons than the 8 gallons. Usually if there's lots of water in the air there's also lots of water available to drink....
@@TwoBitDaVinci the issue isn't does it work, the issue is the energy consumption. As another poster pointed out if it's cheaper to truck in the water the extraction system is pointless. There's been alot of startup scams in this particular space.
Thunderfoot isn't an expert in anything except his Chemistry PhD. Therefore his opinion is no better than anyone else's. The only thing he's got is a posh accent, some editing skills and an ego the size of a blue whale.
@@jackinthebox301 you're missing the point, these three systems are not commercially viable. 50k upfront and 1k per month is ridiculous, others needing land AND daily fog only fits a very small population of the world. Giving a company a platform to promote energy intensive processes to the detriment of the environment is not morally right. There are far cheaper and better solutions to water shortages. This video fails to provide a balanced comparison and comes across as a promotional video.
Here in Arizona, my AC condensate is producing 10-14 gallons a day during monsoon as a byproduct of cooling my home. In dryer weather, 5 gallons is common and we make use of it watering plants. ZERO investment.
Don't forget that with the passive systems you still have to pump water through a filter and possibly a UV disinfecting light and into a storage vessel, then pump to faucets.
We had one of these 'tsunami like' units in our basement in the 1960s already, we called it a 'de-humidifier.' It made a lot of noise and a fair bit of heat but it did yield several gallons of water per day. Of course we didn't want it and ran it down the drain.
Another great video! Your focus is on human drinking water production but domestic and commercial irrigation is a huge consumer of that same precious potable water too. Many air capture systems in the discussions can and are being used today for irrigation allowing for more human consumable water to be available as demand increases and available water decreases due to climate change in desert regions. Larger commercial buildings are big producers of AC condensate. I have personally witnessed 3-4 gpm of condensate from a single air handler on a hot day and researched using it for irrigation. Sometimes its a easy retrofit and sometimes not. There are two buildings I am aware of that have their own capture systems in addition to internal biological waste water treatment systems that use the reclaimed water for toilets and irrigation. One is in Santa Monica and the other is in San Francisco. Ricky, you may look at those buildings and MCRD's (Marine Corp Recruit Depot) biological waste water treatment system as an interesting topic for a future video. The local USGBC may be able to help you find contacts. As for other capture systems, I have read a couple of papers where material scientists are looking at biomimicry for improved capture designs such as the Namibian Beetle carapace which has unique ridges designed to capture the fog water and funnel the water to its mouth. They have incorporated it into a low cost net design significantly improving effectiveness. Some communities in African deserts build sculptures which are quite effective at capturing water from the air. There isn't going to be one technology to solve our water issues but a portfolio approach from efficiency to technologies appropriate for the geographical and societal locations. Your videos give me hope for the future and are quite thought provoking. Keep up the great work.
@@timbrown9305 May not be new to you but most people I come across are uninformed about this issue and Ricky did a great job making it understandable to the general public who need to and want to become more knowledgeable about this important issue. Speaking to the choir in this format can be waste of time but then again there may be something in this you didn't know.
@@slojos IT SAYS "BREAKTHROUGH" The English language is a very specific language. If we are going to bastardize it then count the intelligent people out. Problem is I have seen this persons posts before and he is guilty of doing this more than just this one time. Deemed "clickbait" is an appropriate reaction given the public display of ignorance on this title. Ignorance is not a mean word... It is a very specific word just like "breakthrough" Here is the edit>>> Because of your response to me I have also contacted the sponsor of the post and asked them to no longer sponsor someone who has, not only once but several times used "clickbait" titles in an attempt to get views and responses. The real sad fact is that Leonardo here does not have to lie in the Title... Just be honest. Many others who have been mislead by him feel the same way. If we can get sponsorship taken away it will force honesty.
@@slojos Also, "most people I come across are uninformed about this issue" is what you wrote. Are you really going around to lots of people and interviewing them about this. Highly unlikely so that also makes your statement false. False meaning a lie. Did you lie to me? Be honest because if you read other comments here it looks like I am in a crowd that also is aware that this is not "breakthrough technology" Your poor attempt at using that obviously untrue statement says more about you than you may be willing to admit. Did you think you were going to "put me in my place". I feel like I am writing to a child. You did not go around and ask all your buddies if they had heard of this before. Even if you did it does not change the statement of "breakthrough technology" and its meaning. If this is what our educational system has brought us to then you are a fine example of the need for change in our inadequate educational system. Think about what you are really saying before you say it. The ignorance of people responding here is absolutely shameful.
At LEAST you were honest enough to clearly remind us about relative humidity & temperature affects performance. I think a good unit wld chase the dew point factor via a dewdrop sensor input!
Living in the Arizona desert, water is a major concern. The “fog” nets that can be used in a more arid environment is worth watching. However, I suspect the net would not survive ten years in our intense heat/UV environment. One point about the ZeroMass system is the noise, it’s LOUD.
Great news and information. Well presented. Easy to understand, great graphics and well explained. My hat is off to you Brother. Ty so very much God-bless you and your family 👪 ❤️
How are dehumidifiers breakthrough technology? When I was a kid in the 70s we had them in our home. They were loud, but they produced several gallons of water a day.
This video is correct in stating that classical atmospheric water generators are too expensive because of the extremely high electricity bill. They are also very bad for the environment: if you operate them with grid electricity, which is still mostly fossil fuel based, particularly at night, you will effectively burn 1 gallon of fuel to produce 5 gallons of water. Fog nets do not work if you have normal or even high humidity in the air, you really need fog droplets (this only happens if relative air humidity is 100 %). The hydrogel does need energy to remove the water from the gel; probably they will use solar thermal energy. Therefore, they will need solar thermal collectors, which will again be the main cost driver. I agree with other comments that it is better to use seawater desalination (if available) or to collect rain water and you should always recycle waste water. I also agree with the debunking videos of Thunderf00t. Atmospheric water generators are only acceptable if they are operated with 100 % solar energy and the cost is only justified in regions with extremely little rain _and_ where groundwater is depleted. In other words, it only makes sense in regions where people depend on very expensive water truck deliveries. Unfortunately, a growing number of people live in such regions. The main driver of cost for solar atmospheric water generators is the surface area of solar collectors. With 1500 square ft. of Source panels, at a cost of around 125,000 USD, you will get around 50 gallons of water per day. Our company, Aquahara, is testing more efficient, lower-cost panels. You will get around 50 gallons per day with around 1000 square ft. of solar collectors, at a much lower cost than Source. If you also invest in a wastewater recycling system that recycles 70 % of the water, 50 gallons of atmospheric water will result in total water supply of 150 gallons per day. Again, this investment only makes sense in regions with extremely little rain _and_ where groundwater is depleted. Companies such as Source Global and Aquahara are still continuing research to reduce the cost. Think of it like the photovoltaic industry 15 years ago, where solar panels were 10 times more expensive than today.
In the nineties I opened up Air, Water & Ice inc to promote the use of condensate as pure drinking water and clean clear ice. The other aspect was using the water from a de humidifier for reef keepers.
In ancient India they built giant rainwater catch basins called step wells. Unfortunately most of them fell into disrepair during the illegal British occupation of India and were abandoned. I think we can reboot this concept with modern technology modern catch basins can be lined with concrete to prevent leaking and contamination. The basins can also be covered to prevent evaporation. Intake channels can be equipped with hydroelectric generators to make up for losses in solar electric production during the monsoon season. A large system like this could store massive amounts of water for the long dry season.
These numbers assume that you use the water to take shower, but we can simply use salt water for shower which is better for our skin! If we use the water for just drinking then it’s enough for a whole apartment building
First step is to reduce the amount of water one uses by, for example, buying a circulation shower that filters and re-uses the water. This should save a lot of both money and water every year. Those Tsunami machines makes no sense from a economic or energy perspective. All that wasted electricity could be saved for something else, like cooling the house *and* charging a car at the same time. Fog nets on the other hand is a proven technology, cheap, requires no electricity, and last a long time. Hydrogel also sounds like a promising technology. Simple rain barrels are also a option if it rain regularly where one lives.
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Another tech can help solve water shortage, using Nanotech, check out UA-cam video from "Undecided With Matt Farrell": Tittle "How Nanotech can help solve the Water Shortage". I want to copy and paste here, but UA-cam doesn't let me.
Lol thought of this idea years ago 😂. Back in 2014 could have been rich now if I knew how to make it. Damn
Funny no one’s though of the dehumidifier idea I had all those years ago. Yea water making is damn slow as hell but the electricity it needs would be more cost efficient I think. Make the same item and just add a filter to it
Have you measured the condensation water output of your heat pump? While I doubt it would satisfy all of your needs, i bet it could supply a significant fraction.
12:48 $0.002 is two tenths a penny, graphic is for two hundredths of a penny.
not trying to be 'that guy' but that is a 10X difference. Great vid BTW.
This video covers the most expensive and impractical ways of collecting water from air, while neglecting the most practical methods of extracting water from air (and other places).
The most practical/economical way to extract water from the air, is to let nature do the most energy intensive step (of condensing the water out of the air). For people that don't live in foggy regions where fog nets may work, the most practical way to do this is to install rain gutters on your house roof, awnings, barns, sheds, solar arrays, etc., and then channel rainwater into large volume storage containers (such as big plastic containers like 275 gallon IBC totes or larger, and/or an in ground swimming pool with a cover installed over it, and/or a custom built cistern). The water collected should then be pumped up to pressure with an electric pump, and then filtered with a sediment filter, a carbon filter, and then a UV water sanitizer. Further filtering with a reverse osmosis unit, followed by a re-mineralizing pack is desirable for best water purity and final taste, but is normally non-essential for safety (unless contaminated by algae and/or radioactive fallout, in which case the reverse osmosis stage is highly recommended), if the water was already filtered through a carbon filter and UV water sanitizer. The equipment needed to do all of this in a basic and relatively small system can generally be had for less than $1000 (assuming you use DIY labor), and will generally produce vastly more average annual water output (even in desert locations), compared to vastly overpriced equipment like the "Zero Mass" air/water extraction devices.
Ordinary air conditioners also produce non-negligible amounts of condensate water when running, especially when set to a very cold thermostat temperature. For common whole house AC systems, the condensate water normally collects in a tray under the cold side heat exchanger (often located in one's attic space or wherever the air handler is located). Typically, the water collected is wasted by being piped to a drain that goes into the household sewer lines. One can modify the plumbing on the drain line, so as to instead divert the condensate water to a storage container, whereby it can be purified with a carbon filter and UV sanitizer. Although condensate water is normally fairly clean, it can contain dust from the air and possible traces of mold from the cold side coils on the air conditioner, so it is still preferred to post filter the water with a carbon filter and UV sanitizer before drinking. Trying to obtain large amounts of water in this manner will be very electricity energy intensive however, as it is fundamentally the same as what the grossly overpriced "Tsunami" systems described in this UA-cam video are doing. A far more efficient way of collecting water is via a rain catchment system, but capturing incidental air conditioner condensate water is something that is potentially somewhat interesting, if you are primarily running the air conditioner for home cooling purposes, rather than for water capture purposes. The water produced requires far too much electricity to be economically competitive with other water obtainment methods, but when incidental water is captured, it is essentially a "free byproduct" of cooling off your house with the air conditioner.
Although not "from the air", grey water capture and recycling is also more practical, compared to most of the schemes described in this UA-cam video. Making potable drinking water from grey water is feasible with a sand filter, a charcoal filter, a sediment filter, a carbon filter, a UV sanitizer, and a reverse osmosis based filter. This can be done both at small scale in a residential setting, and at large scale, and it is fairly economical overall. Some municipal fresh water utilities in water starved cities in the US already do this for meeting some of the city's water needs, by using "reclaimed" water as the input water source. The "reclaimed" water is sewer water that has been treated by a municipal sewage treatment plant, prior to subsequent filtering (including the most important step, the reverse osmosis purification). Cities that do this usually don't like to advertise that they are selling you recycled sewer water, but it is nevertheless still being done in some cities where there is not enough nearby surface or groundwater resources available to meet all of the city's fresh water needs directly. That said, fresh water produced via reverse osmosis filtration will normally be much cleaner and more pure than normal municipal water derived from surface water sources, even if it is recycled sewer water.
Wells and sea water desalination (if you have access to sea water) will provide much more reliable and abundant water, compared to trying to capture water from the air, but there are many ways to produce clean drinking water, and they are not mutually exclusive with one another.
Yes. Way too logical though for the Moisture Farmer wannabes. (I tried to explain it in a previous videos comments but Ricky here really wants to show off this water from air gimmick for some reason….)
a very informative and interesting comment!
As somebody that drinks rain water, you dont really need such a sotisticated filter. A simple filter works nicely. If the water is in a dark place, thats all you need. We also buy trucks of water from time to time, so the clorine of that water may be cleaning the water from micrones, but the water have never tastes to chlorine to me
Aeration and electrification can also reduce microbial growth, to extend the life of filters
PS - first move should be filling in the swimming pool. That’s a huge waste.
Video topic starts at 5:13 expensive dehumidifier. 7:45 fog nets with nano fibres. 9:13 super sponge hydrogel
The biggest problem with all of these systems is that they work worst in places with low humidity, where they would be needed most.
Quite a few places with low precipitation have surprisingly high humidity. For example, the fog deserts of Chile, Peru, Baja California, and the Arabian Peninsula. The California coast and Central Valley also get lots of fog.
Cloud catchers (nets) are working just fine in desert areas: moroccos is using them.
I kept my dehumidifier in the basement how to get 6 gallons of water a day
use a rain roof to collect rainwater. grey water recycling, and farming practices that conserve water and promote plant growth (many examples of this in north Africa, India, southwest US, etc.)
Wilhelm Reich took 6 (20 ft long copper pipes) and made a rainmaker in the 1950s.
all the so called advance technology in the last 80 years is a joke.
Start by reducing consumption. I Cape Town we have been through a recent severe drought. Lots of great ideas have been around for reducing consumption. 20 gal per day per person is fairly easy to get to. Rain water collection, water wise gardens, grey water harvesting. No treatment is necessary if these waters are only used in the garden.
How is this different from dehumidifiers? I'm not a huge thunderf00t fan but he has several videos "debunking" a lot of claims of systems like these as they're not much of an improvement over traditional dehumidifiers. I would be interested in hearing your counter to these type of arguments.
Was just going to say that. It’s a dehumidifier
So do you have to like someone to accept their arguments?
Yeah I need a couple more solar panels that would run my dehumidifier during the daytime so I could justify the cost over power usage.
They are dehumidifiers in reverse. This work great in South East Asia not death valley. Vapor pressure and relative pressure I know this plus wongs. Fog nets supper sponge but everyone is still in labs.
@@williammorgan9622 Isn't a dehumidifier in reverse a humidifier?
There is a small scale that is at any big box store. Just get a dehumidifier. And have the outlet go to external storage. Then you have to do your own filtration from there but you can get water from air for just over 100 bucks. This will not be making enough to support your daily use or for the household but in a pinch when you need water from the air this is how you can do it on a budget.
I appreciate you posting this, but we've had functioning AWG for years. The most crude version is water dripping from an air conditioner unit. People have talked about de-humidifiers and drinking the water from those. There are battery powered solid state cooling devices that can be used to keep food cool on trips, and if they cool below the dew point, can generate water. Someone posted a funding request for a windmill with additional solar panels to run an AWG in remote areas. But the single biggest problem there is people smashing those things so they can sell the scrap metal. But again, appreciate you raising awareness.
Peltier tiles will work a charm. Cook your bird on one side 🐦 condense water to ice on the otjer
@@derrekvanee4567 they work, but are only about 3% efficient at cooling, so it's definitely not optimal.
popped in just to say the same but I already see a fellow commenter posted this ahead of me :) If I am not mistaken there have also been AWG systems in place in some ancient cultures
yeah, the condenser systems are old and inefficient. the new hydrogel and mof systems work differently though. very importantly: they work at low humidity levels which condensers have problem with. they also use much less electricity, as explained.
Yeah. I agree with the original comment.. just another "discovery" that... Really isn't a true discovery..
Southern Africa has been having some good results from burying clay pots down about 4' under the surface it has APVC pipe up that collects the air and I believe each day it will deliver 11 quarts.
The new atmospheric nets that they make that drain into a communal system could help look up Southern Algiers.
The biggest thing is people need to factor in quit wasting water
I propose making golf course ownership a felony.
The atmospheric nets are in their infancy imo. When its fully developed, we could theoretically reforest entire deserts with the correct implementation. The "lack" of water is really just an illusion
I have a dehumidifier in the crawlspace with a 70 pint capacity. In summer it fills up almost every other day, in winter I don't run it as the radon system keeps the space dry enough. It is amazing seeing the amount of water coming out of the air!
I had a small computer shop on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. I had one too! It produced literal gallons per day and had to be emptied continuously. I had a lot of plants and they were well-watered! I was dumping the rest. Should have used it to flush to toilets!
Hopefully this is satire.
During the monsoon we are having now, I filled my 70 pint tank twice yesterday. I've been using my dehumidifier in an outdoor shed that is well ventilated. Power usage was around 16KWh used over 16 hours. In my area that's about $1.90 total electrical cost for 17.5 gallons. I think I'd sooner buy a fleet of Frigidaire dehumidifiers than buy even one of these "mil-spec" priced contraptions. Think about it, ten $300 dehumidifiers can make 175 gallons/day when its humid or about 15 gallons/day when it's dry, so $3K vs $30K or $50K.
Its not coming out of the air its coming out of the ground, my god this is why "water from air" BS keeps spreading.
@@instanoodles You have to see the difference as long as you are not in the desert or Antarctica there are a lot of water in the air. (Where do you thing clouds and fog come from). What is BS is when you say that you can get it a lot nearly for free. You need lots of energy or very special conditions like morning fog (rain is the real easy way). What is given is that small devices with low energy consumption in dry air do nothing.
Love the pool heat pump idea. Have you thought about a multi-tier system? Think about these add-ons. What about using a cistern system to catch rainwater and use it for non-potable things, such as washing the car, dishes, watering the lawn and adding water to the pool. You can then use the water in the pool to provide water to the toilets. The idea is to reduce drinkable/potable water to that used to drink, bathe and washing dishes. This would significantly reduce water that would be produced by these systems thereby reducing the energy needed and the amount of water needed. We used a 55 gallon pickle drum to collect water at my house for washing the car and watering the lawn and plants. It was amazing. Just after I installed it we a rain that could only be described as a mist rather than a rain. I thought we were going to need a real rain to fill the drum, but that mist filled it in about an hour. ?!? Cistern systems really could reduce the demand for potable water.
My air conditioner has been pulling water from the air for years
I remember the problem about desalination ...
As I was in South France, Spain and also saw this in Thailand ... build the unit near a salines (salt harvesting area) and offer them the already higher salt water ...
To take the water in the air will ALSO have other long term effects on the climate or sure regions as less water, also less rain.
So Salinas might be better way, as first get drinking water, and after get salt and force more water to evaporate !
We can all benefit from true vaporated sea salt rather than quarry operations.
@@TheEmbrio Yeah, I forgot, that between the desalination unit and the salt evaporation area should also be a rare mineral unit, taking advantage of the minerals in that water also.
As I saw this days a battery based on natrium instead of another rare mineral, a win win for everyone in that chain.
I recall reading about a greenhouse system which uses seawater taken from two points at different depths.
Basically the windward facing side of the greenhouse has a simple woven netting which is saturated with seawater taken from the top warm seawater intake. The warm salty water drips down the netting and evaporates as the wind passes through the netting. The sea salt stays in the netting and can be easily removed by simply wacking the netting with a carpet beater when it becomes clogged. The sea salt can also be packaged and sold.
The water pumped from the second intake of colder seawater taken from deeper in the sea runs through a system of small gauge metal piping positioned above the plants in the greenhouse. The highly humid air condenses on these pipes and drips down onto the plants.
It was claimed that these simple and cheap poly-greenhouses could employ 20 people and feed their families and provide enough excess water for those families while still producing enough fresh produce to be financially viable.
the pumps run on solar power needing only a few panels to maintain the electric needs. Unfortunately this will only work if you are near a sea.
I think Desalinization is great for a small usage. And yes can sell the By product until everybody has one. Then there be too much by product to be useful. Right now the DeSales station plants are dumping nearby product back of the ocean which sink’s to the bottom of does grate harm to the Ecology of the ocean. Small scale it’s fine but for the large scale of the World scale shortage of freshwater just too much waste product. They talk about Getting all the minerals out of the waist using it and batteries. But that would only be a fraction of would be able to use.
This might be the 'Seawater Greenhouse' from Charlie Paton. Nice system, good for poor areas without drinking water, it helps for carbon storage (one of 60 finalists out of 1100 participants for the Elon Musk 100 million dollar X-prize). There are installations in Australia that are working well. A new project is placed in the West Sahara (hotel in the middle of nowhere).
@@carstenschoellner2886 Yes that's quite possibly the one, although if memory serves me correctly, it was about 15 or maybe even 20 years ago that I read about this. I never really followed it up to see if it was being implemented. Thanks for sharing that.
This one got som of the pieces of my puzzle growing in sahara to fall in place so I needed to come back and finde your coment to thank you. 👍 We don't need to be close to the osian to get this to work. If just there is plenty of water and there is most places.
@@carstenschoellner2886 thanks for the info 👍
Edit i live in west sahara and never hear of the hotel (time to seartch😄)
The big question for me is what happens to the atmosphere when humanity around the world uses these technologies. The potential changes to ecosystems would probably create the next global crisis as areas around the world would blame other parts of the world for their water shortages.
I agree, i.e. removing water from air in a large scale would dry the environment and make it easier for forest fires to happen, also not only humans but a miriad of creatures need this humidity to live and thrive.
Indeed, in many places, the water in the air doesn't belong to you - it belongs to the government. Just as you can't dam a river passing across your property and sell the water, you can't pull the water from the air. In fact, they won't even let you save the water that falls from the sky! When I lived in New Mexico, the catch basins that had been used by the original owner to store rain were required to be filled in with rubble and capped, and the rain water diverted away from the basins.
@@TheJLF65 I would love to understand whatever contorted goal that gvmt had with that law.
@@HansSchulze If everyone stored the rain water, much less would make it into the rivers and aquifer. This would mean less water for the government to turn around and sell back to you. No free water for you! How dare you even think of stealing from the government! :) Water in the US southwest is serious business. In the old days, personal wars were fought over it. In modern times, the government strictly controls all water, especially now that it is growing more scarce.
@@TheJLF65 we can't possibly hold all the rainwater... On all the lands... Efficiently... If we did, we might not have any sort of water problem.
So what I'm hearing is that we need a transparent hydrogel coating for solar panels that can absorb water during the night and then evaporate it off during the day to cool the panel.
🥇
Plaster a thick pack at the back of your panels and Bob's your uncle. 🙂
Love it. I volunteer to join you Goblin Army, and will supply my own shiny bits.
Doesn't need to be transparent.. just glue it on the back of the panel
No , put the gel on the back of the panel. It needs heat , not sunlight. Good idea !!
Good Video! Even here in Washington State, people take water for granted. Glad you guys are getting some rain, at least I hope it's getting down your way.
Use of greywater and other conservation methods means you can cut the 300 gallons/day down significantly. This angle needs to be part of the discussion.
My buddy had a 75 gallon tank in his back yard to collect rain water, and also the water from his washing machine, to feed his garden. That is a practical way to collect some water for your garden.
A 1 KW well pump can produce over 100 gallons per hour to feed the horses on the farm that I lived on for several years in San Diego County.
DIY idea: a hollow backing behind your solar panels. Blow are through the system to cool solar panels (improves efficiency), then run that warm air to a closed system below or around your pool to cool the air. Then to a condenser that extracts the water.
Think of it this way. Condenser/heat exchange unit in the middle. Hot air comes from roof. Cool air from the pool/ground.
Try the Best Water-Crisis-Coverage
on YT: 'Some More News'.
One other way to save on water - turn off the shower, while you apply shampoo and wash yourself, don't water your lawn, use a dishwasher etc. but as long as water is so cheap and few people will care I guess.
It is said that necessity is the mother of invention. On opening our home to a family fleeing the invasion of Ukraine by their neighbouring war hungry Orcs, we suddenly found that our solar system was struggling to maintain sufficient hot water for two families.
We asked another family who had also provided a safe home for refugees, how were they able to deal with the extra demand for hot water.
"Military showers for everyone", was the answer.💙😉
Since you are in San Diego, and near the ocean, consider this: Forty foot high towers above the maximum high tide level (actually a U shaped pipe) in which the South side is black and the north facing pipe in the shade is white. A near full vacuum is created at the top of the tower (loop). The sea water essentially boils on the sunny side, and fresh water condenses on the shady side. Pumps push the fresh water to holding towers while making sure that the tower pipes do not go dry.
Salt concentrations will go up in the local area, but sea life will likely evolve and adapt to that environment. Also, at night fresh water would condense on the South side pipe which would help keep salt build-up from being a problem.
As far as natural condensation nets, I have found that if I let my pasture grass grow, I do not need to water and it stays green until late July, to early August. My back yard is now just starting to turn to straw with one variety and good seed heads. Another variety is still rather green and just starting to dry out on the seed heads. I've not irrigated at all this year, and I live in a high desert.
I once heard of an idea for water desalination, don’t know how well it would work: you build a long thin “mini-greenhouse”, say two feet wide and tall and a mile long. A salt-water trough runs down the middle, from which water evaporates. It recondenses on something (what would work best?) and drips into shaded and partially covered collector troughs running down each side.
There are problems with solar desalination of ocean water, one of which is that it is full of nutrients and algae. Microscopic plankton and algae will grow abundantly in the sun exposure of the supply water trough, producing a concentrated slime that will gum up the trough as the water is evaporated away. But it is possible to separate and collect the algae growth as a biofuel source. A large-scale system needs to find ways to prevent this biofouling.
@@DMahalko would grow more than algae...encrusting invertebrates, etcs...would be a bear to clean!
@@mrtechie6810 Make the center trough out of a pipe and cut the top off so it looks like a c. Then clean it regularly with a piston you pull through it. You could use multiple pipes side by side to increase top surface area.
Saudi Arabia is building those. It's a centuries old idea. But unless you are in a dessert, not useful
How about 2 ft wide and a mile long solar panels, and just boil the sea water to vapor right at the input. Eliminate the long troughs.
Have periodic (daily?) automated scraping/cleaning of boiling chamber.
Your final note on using the swimming pool as a heat sink for the cooling part of a condenser does sound intriguing.... until the pool gets so hot that you need to start cooling it! I'd like to see the math on whether the condensation you manage to achieve is wiped out by the elevated evaporation due to heating the pool. Or simply factoring in how much water you need to keep topping up the pool to counteract normal evaporation in the first place.
After watching so many Thunderfoot videos on how cost inefficient these dehumidifiers are and cost more than trucking in water, I’m very skeptical.
same, carbon footprint should be shit just based on the inefficiency
Exact same thought.
When there is no water to truck in, the cost doesn't seem so important anymore. Thunderf00t is just chasing a buck which causes him to cherry pick, exaggerate, and sometimes misconstrue the facts. Please stop watching him.
@@Seibar42 He's right on these. This is just nonsense.
@@Seibar42 on the ones I've seen, he projects realistic use and cost and show how foolish these things are for general use.
Even this video reveals this. Look at the minimum daily yield on the dehumidifiers at 5:41 ...0.5gallons for a huge power consumption.
The nets shown only work in foggy areas, on a foggy day. That's not common, especially in areas with scarce water.
Gel may be more versatile, but not yet in production, so hard to say. But its yield also varies depending on humidity and temp. Guess where it will yield the least?
The answer is no.
Most of these things are scams, not only are they inefficient but are almost always conditional.
If the air isn't humid it takes more energy and time to get more water. The places that really need something like this are often not very humid in the first place. It's less energy efficient than to ship the water into the area and it always will be if transportation moves forward in efficiency.
Don't forget, the fog nets require fog and light winds. In all other cases they do nothing. In most areas fog is a very rare occurrence and it's usually with little wind.
If any water from air harvesting methods actually worked and were implemented on a large scale, I'd be worried that we'd get less actual rain since we'd be dropping humidity levels. It would probably only be minor but still a real concern. Perpetuating this shows a real lack of scientific knowledge in my opinion. They're on par with other large scale scams, like solar panels and electric cars. They're interesting and fun but are not more efficient when electricity prices are as high as they are and the upfront cost and maintenance cost (of solar and electric batteries over time) is very high/doesn't pay off the investment.
Wow, they built a big dehumidifier. And I wonder about the environmental wisdom of pulling water out of the air on a large scale.
Make the desert drier.
@@tedmoss TRU-DAT, but if EVERYONE was using/doing it, I'm sure that there is a point that there is ZERO left in said air & then the DIY in your back yard users, produces less & less the more the total number of unit online increases. I'll wager that "dustman" was pondering on a grander scale, outwards to the degree of ""WILL THIS BE ABLE TO CAUSE/PRODUCE A SHIFT IN THE NATURAL FLOW OF AIR ACROSS THE PLANET"" since all things in nature want to be EQUAL and a large population area using this technology & extracting every bit of H2O now triggers a deficit so is it all of the ADDED GREENERY that returns its water first, trees & grass & the like or will it trigger an influx from other areas and thus create new and different air/wind flow patterns that end up causing havoc on some other part of our meek little existence on this third rock from the sun?!?!?!?
P.S. Just look at the increased level of skin & lips & finger tips that are cracked & split during the winter months with its lower available humidity. Could we be doing this on a much larger scale??? Just another lil point to ponder.......MR
Yeah, Coastal mountains take all the rain as it is. If you start large scale humidity harvesting on the coast the interior loses rain & has more evaporation.
@@ericmaclaurin8525 California destroying the rest of the country, again! Lol
Really interesting video, especially during the early stages of a drought here in the UK.
Something I wanted to comment on though was your figure for the average U.S househould's water consumption at 300 gallons per day. Here in the UK that figure is around 80 and elsewhere, in Israel for example, nestled in the arid climate of the levant, that figure is closer to 50 gallons. These technologies have an incredible amount of potential but the U.S really ought to seek to reduce their usage at the same time. The smaller Tsunami-500 unit could potentially provide enough water for 4 average Israeli homes, yet it can't even produce enough for ONE single average household in the U.S? You really don't need that much water and places like Israel will be better equipped to deal with a lack of water in the future where the U.S will really struggle to come to terms without acclimatising first.
I think the numbers are BS.
I would argue just using desalination and then building water pipelines or other transport methods for a vast majority of situations.
You would have to do an energy analysis of one process against the other to really understand the difference, but I believe desalination is many times more cost effective and easier to do in bulk. I think in certain situations, like if you were to make a hyper-efficient air balloon using renewables where travel is slow and producing water in the air is convenient, or if you are at a high elevation where the transport cost offsets costs, then due to the scenario it may be a better choice though.
I agree, solar or offshore wind energy can desalinate and with existing reservoirs only need to operate when power is available.
Why add the complexity of transporting water from ocean to land when there is an ocean already in the air? If the water can efficiently be condensed then let Mother Nature transport it for us.
@@ljdavick there are a number of issues with scaling something like that, and in reality it is a scenario by scenario basis where you have to look at different options to see which is more cost efficient. In the current status, in a vast majority of situations I think desalination with transport infrastructure is multiple times more cost efficient. In specific high altitude areas it may offset the cost enough to be worthwhile though.
In the real world you are supposed to analyze different options and run optimization equations according to your environment to identify the best option for the scenario. That is how basically all infrastructure engineering works, and while I haven't worked on that specific kind of engineering I would guess they have logical equivalent systems... though I seriously doubt they are actually used to give people optimal infrastructures. Most likely actual engineers are ignored despite having the ability to solve the issue and business people and politicians will decide based on what is most convenient for them in most scenarios
At large enough scale, desalination could be a problem for marine life, since it generates super salty water (it has a name that escapes me right now)
@@noisycarlos you are talking about brine, or dissolved brine in waste water. That would only happen if you specifically chose to put the waste back into the water in unhealthy amounts. Normally you would send it elsewhere to be either processed into different products or disposed of as solid waste. * or if you had system leaks
I live in Houston TX USA. A couple years back we replaced our central air conditioning unit with a heat pump and moved the primary condensation drain from the domestic sewer to the outside (Just reroute the pipe out side). The heat/ac unit is in the attic. Then I bought a 55 gallon food grade plastic barrel and ran the condensate drain into the barrel. Initially, I planned to use the condensate to water my potted plants. Well, after 7 days the drum overflowed. The ac produces over 7.5+ gallons of water daily. That's 225 gallons water monthly. Understanding we live in a high humidity area other areas might not see the same results. I plan to use the water for a 50 ft raised bed garden. Water water everywhere, we just need to learn how to find it.
Places like San Diego have very little humidity although it seems to be increasing slowly as a climate warms where you need the water the most is Desert communities that have the least amount in the air
Coastal deserts like Namib and Atacama are not only old and very dry but are coastal deserts they have coastal fogs that blow of the ocean at certain points in the year.
Mist nets are the easiest way to passively collect water ...based on the behaviour of key plants and beetles.
Have you lived in San Diego? The normal dew point would average above 55F most of the year, so there actually is a lot of moisture in the air, mostly because of the warm and moist breeze coming off of the ocean. While not as humid as Florida, it is not a dry area, like Phoenix AZ.
But even the most energy efficient dehumidifier, the Santa Fe Impact 155, will make 155 pounds of water from air that is over 60% RH and 72F, per 24 hours, while consuming about 1 KW per hour, that is 9 gallons of water while consuming about 24 KW of power! That is not energy efficient way to get water, when a 1 KW well pump and drilling down 85 feet will produce 100+ gallons per hour of very tasty water.
Not to mention that water condensate from a dehumidifier or air conditioner will have a lot of mold spores, and other things like dust and contaminates in the water. Not drinkable water until processed.
I live near Toronto in Canada and I have my down stairs toilet receiving condensate via a condensation pump with my dehumidifier running all day I get 2 flushes. Good enough for my teen son. Lol
"Uses 7 kilowatts per hour" -- correction, the kilowatt is an instantaneous consumption unit, so to find out per hour how much it adds up to, the unit would be then kilowatt-hour. So the correct way to express that would have been "Uses 7 kilowatts-hour per hour" or by simplification "Uses 7 kilowatts".
This kind of sloppiness about units is very annoying to me too.. I can't figure out what he's trying to say when he says 17kW per hour. That makes no sense at all.
I've seen flyers from our local electricity utility making these kinds of mistakes... 😪
There was also the inconsistency with 7.5kWh/day in the narration but graph said 7.5kW (about 10:22) but later the kW were multiplied to get 100kWh/day (12:00ish). I'm guessing the 100kWh per day is the answer that makes sense but that is a huge amount of power. Trying to keep the rough order of magnitude of the numbers in my head and they are randomly being multiplied by randomly inconsistent units.
English isn't my native language but 7kw per hour is saying the same as 7 kWh. Where you get your hour per hour which would make kWh-squared I don't understand
@@bzuidgeest I don't think it is easy to explain in english. More of a maths thing. I'm going to make an English mess trying to explain. Sorry.
The "per hour" implies division by hours so 7kW per hour is the same as 7kW/h which isn't that useful (maybe powerstation ramp up or something). We would use "for an hour" to imply multiplication. Think of a kW as "fast". We could charge "fast" for an hour to get lots of energy (Joules or kWh) in the same way we could drive fast for an hour to get lots of distance. It doesn't make sense to drive fast per hour.
For many people a simple water collection system from the rain off your roof with a sizable storage could be enough for your cleaning needs, while one of the systems you talked about could work for drinking and cooking. We waste drinking water on washing ourselves everyday.
I’m definitely most into those nets. I aspire to build a homestead cabin in my 30s and while those industrial Tsunami ones would be fantastic scaled up and energy efficiency optimized for communities, those nets and gels (I can’t really imagine too much use out of the gels though, not sure why) would be awesome for a cabin. I’d still have a well and a rainwater system obviously, but, it’d be great to have that extra diversity and take some load off of the groundwater as the shifting rains dry new ground out, especially since plants in my experience don’t really use humidity as much as we’d think. Awesome stuff with seriously low impact, I love it.
It's just a big dehumidifier with a water filter!
This definitely doesn't make desalination plants obsolete. We just have to actually use the desalination plants and water generators to run them.
I know what a dehumidifier is, just popped in to see what the take on it is/was here. Just buy any dehumidifier then get a small filter system to treat and filter the water. Your good. The filter system would be the key due to the nature of it and having to literally force the water through the filter.
How about a geothermal style condenser that uses water cooled under ground in a grid to condense water from the air. The trick would be figuring out how to power the small pump. I guess that would need to be done via solar panels and batteries. But I am thinking maybe convection might also work if you ad in back flow valves to keep the water flowing in a loop.
I just bought a large flat style HVAC coil and am planning on initially using cold well water to air condition my work shop. Later I want to use a under ground cooling loop instead of the well water. I am betting the well water at 50 degrees may act as a dehumidifier so I will need a drain, a drain is already built into the HVAC coil so I could collect that water, filer it and then drink it. but do not need to.
In the end places that are vary dry concerning humidity and have no local rivers, that would be a difficult place to pull water from the air. Those places are were this water out of air is actually needed.
🎓
EDIT: What I'm getting at is of that 300 gal/day the majority could easily be replaced with lower "quality" gray water.
Honestly a "divide and conquer" approach is the best way to go about it.
Gathering gray water (rain runoff, water from ACs/dehumidifiers, etc) for non-potable uses, while reducing usage through high efficiency machines (for clothes and dish washing) and closed loop showers for people/pet washing.
You only need potable levels of filtration for a small amount per day, usually in the 10-20 gallons range for a house.
The Source Hydropanels at the end actually produce less water than just leaving a bucket with the same x/y dimensions outside to collect the average rainfall in most US cities, if you average it out over a full year. 8 litres (each panel's cited maximum daily output) is about 2.11 gallons and I'm led to believe that Wal-Mart will sell buckets that hold more than that for way less than $3000 each.
You can make your own bucket-feeder system to catch rain for a home storage tank (which presumably you'd need to buy as well to make proper use of any of these systems anyway) for a steal by comparison... or just set up your house's whole roof into a funnel run-off system instead and save on buckets.
Rain capture is out right illegal in some states, in others it's actually encouraged. Last I looked it's illegal (or regulated) in most of the south west.
Edit: For example San Diego is limited to a single 50 gallon rain barrel per residence regardless of number of occupants.
@@Shindinru Well on a state-level, California's only limit is the Rainwater Capture Act of 2012, which seems to mostly just limit it to being used for landscaping needs (gardening, etc).
No US state bans rainwater capture outright anymore although in the past it was the case that it was banned in some states.
It would be interesting to see how well each of these work in someplace that is truly dry, like Yuma, Vegas, or Bakersfield. Maybe a head to head competition to see which can produce the most water in a 72 hour period. Limit each to a system sized at less than $100/month cost for energy and amortized capital cost. If the manufacturers truly believe in their claims, they should welcome that chance to prove themselves.
Good suggestion.
No way they will do that.
@@bobgreene2892 Best Water-Crisis-Coverage
on YT: 'Some More News'.
@@nenmaster5218 Thanks- I'll check
Rain collection and grey water reuse. You could also go get a few off the shelf dehumidifiers and put them out in the yard.
Yep either a couple off the shelf dehumidifiers or some of the roof top solar dehumidifiers should provide all the potable water his family needs, then reuse grey and rain water like you said for everything else. It will make for an interesting plumbing project if anything!
It's so nice to come to an informative and entertaining channel which has videos which do not have that awful fashionable annoying and distracting music over the voice. Those videos will not age well, but these on this channel, with just this wonderful voice, will be timeless treasures. Thank you.
I have a Rheem Protera 303L/80 freedom gallon’s ;) heat pump water heater. I haven’t measured it but I imagine this would be a much more efficient route as you heat your water it draws in you warm moist air spitting out cold dry air and waste water. Basically a dehumidifier for my basement. I would love to figure out how I can recirculate that in my system. Or just use it in plants in the summer.
As someone that works in Water Treatment, it should be noted that the water from all 4 of these technologies would produce un-mineralized and undisinfected water. This means that you really shouldn't drink it and you can not interconnect it to the standard water grid. That doesn't even factor in power to pump collected water to holding or to pressurize holding to your 2nd grid.
Community scale water treatment has many advantages to homebrew. More cost effective desalination (MIT's new system or ocean vapor collection) will blow the socks off of any in-home appliance.
A passive system, even if only used for drinking water, is worth it. Survival isn't going to be based in doing your laundry or taking a shower.
I disagree. And many doctors would agree, I'd bet. Hygiene is very much needed for survival. Imagine never having clean clothes and never showering. Your health would decline far faster than you would think.
@@Nic3GreenNachos Your perspective is based on the made up world we currently live in. Reality is that there are no showers or cars or grocery stores or anything that doesn't occur naturally without all of the infrastructure we have built up over hundreds of years. All of which would crumble in a matter of weeks if an EMP bomb took out the electric grid. REALITY is harsh.
Today's people don't know how to find food and actually know little about what food is. If reality ever asserts itself, 80% of the population would be gone in a couple of months or so.
I just watched your video, water from air. Judging by my own experience, I think a lot of air conditioning is needed by humidity in the house. It seems that these more passive techniques can assist with this. For regular AC, dehumidifying uses close to the same energy as AC. If we could incorporate a dehumidifying system like these, we could lower the need. Even if the net needs charging, it would certainly be much less. That would certainly be handled by solar. I don't really understand how to use the gel, so not so many ideas. What do you think?
So these Tsunami systems are basically A/C units. I was hoping for something more innovative. My A/C unit also creates a lot of water as well.
I put a temporary extension tube on the drain tube of my A/C unit and send the water to a drip system for my front garden, keeps things alive at least when rain gets scarce during the summer, and prevents the muddy puddle right next to the house (which couldn't have been good for the foundation).
I’ve noticed that our on demand water heater drips quite a bit of water (condensation not a leak) so it’s now also watering our herb garden via a bucket I empty a few times a week.
Back in the early 1970s, when I was in Forestry school, I read in a book something to the effect that as much water flows over the state of Arizona in one week as flows down the Mississippi river in a month, so this doesn't surprise me.
I wonder how long before Thunderfoot does a video debunking this subject again?
My family and I have lived in Thailand for about 13 years now and we purchased a condensation electric water system which produces all our drinking water for a family of three. The unit consumes about the same power as our refrigerator and the cost of the unit 12 years ago was less than $1000. We have solar power which produces most of our electric needs. We have saved a lot of money not buying water and have not consumed thousands of plastic bottles. The unit produces a max amount of 16 liters of water/ day.
Its very simple. Areas with low humidity have limited fresh water, areas with high humidity usually have plenty of fresh water. That's all you need to know to understand how pointless this technology is.
It may be a small amount, but take the waste water condensation pipes from your home AC and store that. It may not add up for home use, but may aid in watering a garden.
I like you analysis. I looked into capture nets in the past 10 years. I live on the coast that has fog nearly every morning so it seems ideal. However, afternoon wind is quite rough on the equipment and sunlight breaks down the nets quickly. Then there's birds.. finally filtration is still needed.
Id put them on rollers, that are rolled in during the day and rolled out at night, that could even be part of the collection process, few birds fly at night, so both problems solved, you could also just put out cheap netting permanently to stop birds that ae early risers flying into the capture nets.
@Digital Music Hobby The nets work all day and night with as low as 4% humidity, you don't store them away. It uses the sun to heat up the fabric on one side and the wind to cool and condense on the other, your ideas won't work.
@@LOFIGSD good suggestions
@Digital Music Hobby that is worth trying. Thanks
Uncle Owen on Tatooine was a water farmer.
All you need is 200 foot of pipe (6 or 8 inch PVC) sloping down to a tank . Say start a foot above ground, and have the tank 10 foot down or deeper. Have a second pipe coming up from the tank with a SLOW fan pulling air through, the humidity will condense on the cold (60F) underground pipe, and run down hill to the tank.
A small pump and pipe to get the condensed water out is the last part. This will be distilled water so do NOT forget your vitamins and minerals . Don't thank me, thank Uncle Owen.
Owen Lars was a human male from the desert planet Tatooine who worked as a moisture farmer.
This is one of the subjects I've been looking into the fog net. Seems the best, self sustainable, cheap and no electric required option out there.
Look forward to your progress and updates. Thanks for sharing 👍🇬🇧
Rain water collection would be a better and cheaper alternative most places. Even in the Arizona desert it will cover your needs for long stretches of time.
@@bknesheim i think, especially in Arizona, the fog net would work far better.
A fog net made from natural fibers will slowly rot from being constantly moist, until it falls apart and has to be replaced... A fog net made from plastics will gradually degrade from ultraviolet rays from the sun, releasing microplastics as it debonds, until it falls apart and has to be replaced.
That's what morocco is using.
@@DMahalko it a water collector, not a water cleaner. You don't collect water from a river or roof and just use it. Material degradation isn't much of a problem. Distil what you ingest.
Cheap, low maintenance and able to provide relatively clean water. Sounds like a win to me.
One thing to consider, typical consumption numbers include flushing toilets and washing dishes. The important part is how much a person needs to consume, and possibly cook with. The rest could use any water available.
There is a difference between the amount of water you need versus what you'd typically use, I suppose. So from just a survival aspect, you wouldn't need 300 gallons per day. For some applications like flushing your toilet, perhaps there are other options like reusing Ggrey water rr even a composting toilet.
Yes. The real answer includes a lot of water conservation. For personal use daily, we could be using just a couple gallons of water showering, a couple for cooking and cleaning dishes, and a couple for consumption (on a typical day). We could and should reduce use for purely non-food (ornamental) plants, like lawns by a lot.
Note also that piped flush sewers were an invention to allow more growth and disease-reduction in cities in the mid-1800s. That doesn't mean they're a solution forever. Perhaps we should consider solutions where we don't mix good fresh water with our dung? Maybe robotic drying and collection systems?
No worries; Fritz Schlunder (above) says you just drink your sewer water after running it through a filter. Problem solved! Piss never tasted so good...
In S. Florida we have the opposite problem. Getting rid of water in the air in the house. So not only do we have an HVAC system, we also have a dehumidifier. The dogs prefer the condensate to even the ground water from the well. If we are lucky, we can keep the RH down to 50% but both units will be producing gallons of water per day. I also use it as needed for top off water for the battery bank.
I’m interested in scaleable water systems that can have impact far above individual needs. I think this is going to become one of the key planetary issues of this century.
I’m looking forward to additional development in this area, great video, thanks.
It's already happening. Check out morroco they are using the cloud catchers to provide watter to distant arid areas making huge improvements to the people living there.
Surprisingly Israel's water desalination is fairly cheap.
@@autohmae- Israel's seawater desal is Not cheap enough for mass agriculture in open air. But that is mainly because plants in open air are incredibly wasteful of water and solar energy.
@Ray Miller - Be on the lookout for an emerging technology called The Updraft, which imitates Nature's way of squeezing water from air and even improves on it by producing power, too. Both on quite a large scale.
@@YodaWhat depends on the country, for example the Netherlands uses only 10% of the water of many other countries. So it's a matter of knowing what to do and how. But I agree, we should transition to methods of using less water where possible.
I recently git into an argument with one of my oldest friends who lives in San Diego, and it was all over him insisting its just a drought and will end soon, me insisting this is different from all the droughts he's experienced over his 50 years in SoCal. This is something different. This is climate change.
It's called a dehumidifier😂😂😂😂they've been around awhile.
true!@
Loving your videos. Keep up the great work. I was unaware of the tidal generation of electricity being already used. I have shared many of your videos to my Facebook. Hopefully, your information will be shared and become more widely used.
Given one of the properties of aerogels is (when dry) they’re incredibly light, it strikes me that 33kg might need a huge amount of space - some of the lightest are around 160g per cubic meter, with others being ~1.5kg per cubic meter
So depending on how dense it is, 33kg could take up anywhere from 22m^3 (pretty big, but might fit domestic house plots) to 206m^3 (huge, likely not feasible domestically unless you own a farm)
were aerogels mentioned?
I drilled my own water well less than 25 feet deep for under $500. I hand pump it, drink it and water plants. It currently costs nothing but it also builds biceps. I take 10 gallons a day from it. It should make more after deepening to 17 feet. Add a solar electric down hole pump should be ideal. I think we may use in the house 20 gallons a day!
Devils Advocate: Is there a threat of overdoing it taking so much water out of the atmosphere that it negatively effects the water cycle?
No 😀 (even if these were feasible and my money says none of them are except maybe the nets in very specific environments )
The water doesn't just vanish. It remains part of the cycle and eventually returns to the ground or atmosphere after being used by people.
And to add to above; if we were to reduce the moisture content of a section of the atmosphere, it would simply absorb more as it is normaly at an equilibrium to which it will attempt to return.
The planet is too big, it cant affect it. It's like saying humans can change climate, it's just too big for little humans to have an effect on it. Any 1960's teacher would have told you that, it's so obvious.
@@Joe-lb8qn I know it doesn't vanish I was more talking about water storage.
Here in New Zealand almost all houses in the rural area do not have a town supply. We collect our own from rain water or stream or bore, most of us realize the importance of water conservation, the idea of using over 300 gallons of water per day for the average house is insane, yes some of these technologies look valuable. however the more frugal use and ensuring the system is in good order would go a huge way to alleviating the problem. A change in the ecosystem of housing would also help a great deal, I know some areas in the US are already doing this.
Have you ever used a dehumidifier? Have you ever tasted the water from a dehumidifier? It's nasty but anyway I wonder about the hydro gels. How do you extract the water? Do you squeeze it to release it so there has to be some kind of electricity used at some point so there's that cost too, right? I don't know. I'm very curious about the hydro gels. I don't think the nets are going to be all that practical. Can you imagine if you live in an area like I don't know San Francisco somewhere along the coast and everybody on their roof has a as one of these net systems? I don't know if that would be acceptable from a Civic standpoint.
he have AC unit, he can try the water 🤣🤣
heat releases the water. so it can be done passively, like in the example he discussed of the sun releasing the water during daytime. Or, what he didn't really discuss, is a hybrid system which uses some electronics to heat and cool the system to get many cycles in a day, instead of just one.
Tasting nasty is the least of it. Untreated water can be full of harmful microbes. Blech! Processing is absolutely necessary!
I live in the driest state of Australia which is deemed the driest continent on earth and one suggestion for desalination of seawater made decades ago now to overcome increasing demand for potable water was the following.
It was proposed that large floating structures resembling an Archimedes screw could be anchored at sea near the coast where wind and tide could be employed to raise seawater up the spiral.
It was suggested that the seawater could be sprayed outward when it reached the top causing a relatively fine spray of salt water to evaporate causing dissolved salt to precipitate out and fall back to the sea.
It was suggested that this would artificially elevate humidity content for air carried inland against a range of hills nearby to the east every afternoon due to the 'sea breeze' effect where orographic effects would result in increased rainfall.
This sounds great...especially the fog net (I think it's the best of the three). I'm wondering though..."How will the use of these systems affect the atmosphere/local weather?"
If many persons in a given locale are using the system(s), would that compromise the possibility of rain hence, the water supply to the rivers etc.? 🤔
Scale up to an entire country or continent using these systems, then...😯
That's taking the rain before it falls. This may exacerbate water shortage 🤷🏽
What do you guys think? 🤔
It would affect rain in other places just like wind mills affect the air movement of places down wind of them. You could argue that this is controlling where the rain falls so less gets waisted but then that could lead to more water wars too.
If enough are placed along coastlines, then inland areas will get a lot less rain and moisture. Most likely making the problem worse as lakes and rivers dry up.
@@pyronac1 This is a possible scenario yes.
Existing Fog Nets are used in just a handful of places like high cliffs, at Coastal Chile which are known to have fog daily for about 9 months of the year. There is simply so much fog, being blown inland by strong coastal winds, there there is no chance of "running out" of fog. The Fog nets would be catching not even 1% of 1% of the available fog. "Theoretically" if enough people had fog nets, might it be a problem at some far off future date ? Maybe. But very few parts of the world have exceedingly low, almost zero rainfall, while also having very VERY high fog levels. Like all day all night 9 months of the year dense fogs.
@@KiwiCatherineJemma Wow! I did not realize there was so much fog for such an extended period in any area! 😳
If such a miniscule amount is harvested, then...point taken 👍🏼
I installed a heat pump hot water heater last year and collect the waste water from my unit. I currently produce 5 gallons a month (average) and have it stored for emergency water purposes. Since I make BIOCHAR I can use that to filter the heat pump water if needed. Nice presentation.
Great video! yes.. I would love you to review the mini desalination units that Manoj Bhargava talks about in his documentary?? It seems like they could be floated up and down the coast of California to refill some of the ground water that has been overtapped to prevent saltwater intrusion. Love to hear your thoughts on that.
The first one might work during the day when the sun shines and the wind blows, especially when it comes to public water supplies. When the grid is overloaded with solar&wind power, utilise the redundant power to make public water.
Great video, thanks! Would be awesome if you could make the calculations in SI units.
The simple fact is that places that have trouble getting water often lack the level of humidity needed to make water condensers effective. Places where you can collect water "out of thin air," it's typically massively abundant. The only way that I could think of an aerial condenser system being a good idea would be at sea, where you could build a massive scale condensor project to collect moist sea breezes, ones that would be unlikely to turn into useful land rain on their own, and then dumps that water into storage tanks to be transported inland where they need it. You could perhaps do this in the various seas around the Middle East, for example.
Another great video as always! IMHO, California needs to invest heavily in renewable powered desalination/lithium extraction in conjunction with fixing the Salton Sea one way or another... Since there are 11 lithium extraction operations proposed for the area using renewables as well it seems like one the largest environmental "crissatunity" moments for California in its history... Also SMR's since nuclear itself isn't the issue. It's what to do with all that still radioactive "waste"... Then again, the French have mastered that with reprocessing/recycling/transmutation and glassification of low and medium level waste.
Don't forget nuclear waste diamond batteries...
Maybe instead of wasting energy in these crap solutions. You could just fix the bad water management rules in California or remove those idiots farming in what is basically a dessert. California has enough water, it just lacks people being smart about it's use.
@@bzuidgeest those farmers are making money which is essential for an economy - to produce something.
NIMBYists in California only want pollution and mining in China and Africa, far far away from their favorite nature spots.
Nuclear "waste" has been exaggerated by the news and politics. It's never been an issue. You can easily store it above ground in silicon and concrete casks.
One additional cost to factor into water extraction systems compared to a community water connection is that in the latter the water arrives under pressure. So with the water extraction system, it at least has to be mounted up high, or you need a pump. Not insurmountable, but just something to include.
It's a de humidifier with a filter so why do they cost so much?
Not the way to go, unless absolutely necessary.
The only thing I can think of is the 20 year warranty of near constant use and they haven't scaled up, or maybe they are looking to sell them to a Saudi prince or something 😅
Here in Tucson we have salt cedars that were brought here over two hundred years ago. When they are small they get fresh water from the ground but when they get really big they rely on the water in the air.
Aside from the title being clickbait, none of these solutions is going to be the silver bullet. Water depends on the local climate conditions and cost of each method. A multipronged approach is needed (from least expensive to most):
- Conserving water by planting lawns with low water use plants, leak repair, better toilets, etc.
- Large storm water collection projects. Collection systems dependant on weather are unreliable: $230 - 260 / acre-foot
- Brackish desalination: $840 - $1,200 / acre-foot
- Non potable reuse (may cost more due to infrastructure): $550 - $1,200 / acre-foot
- Indirect potable reuse: $1,100 - $1,600 / acre-foot
- Desalination for extremely arid areas: $1,900+ / acre-foot
Source: The Cost of Alternative Water Supply and Efficiency Options in California, October 2016
Also check out reallifelore's "How Las Vegas Exists in America's Driest Desert"
I had never heard of fog nets or super sponges. Thank you! There are plenty of other methods too; you could do a regular series with content for years.
One system that comes to mind from decades ago (sorry I can't recall the name) is basically an aqueduct the desalinates along the way. Picture a sealed duct, transparent on top, with a partition running down the middle. The transparent top is sloped towards the fresh water side. Salt water is pumped into the other side. As the salt water flows down the aqueduct, sunlight warms the water so that it starts to condense on the top. The condensed water rolls down the slope to the other side. By the time the aqueduct reaches its destination, the salty side is dry and the fresh side is full. The salt needs to be scraped out periodically, and some energy is required for lift stations. But most of the energy for desalinization comes from the sun.
That is OK, but you have to watch for salt transfer to the clean side.
This canal could run east-west (or west-east) to focus solar energy on one side of the canal. The partition could be as close to the shaded bank as possible to allow the maximum of solar energy to be imparted on the salty side. The flow of salt water should be tuned to leave a brine that will still flow in order to prevent having to scrape salt out. The brine could be deposited on large flats to reflect sunlight back into space and mined when technology has advanced to a point where extracting rare earths from the salt becomes viable.
The sunny side of the canal should be lined with low albedo (carbon black) fractals to maximize energy absorption. To avoid having to pump salt water in (corrosive), the canal should flow away from the ocean, which means fresh water should be tapped as soon as viable to avoid having to pump all of it from the canal's deepest point. It would be even better to condensate and catch the water vapour high enough so gravity can be used to distribute it. This way we can do away with the partition all together. It does require a taller structure.
Being in our nature to mess things up, how many of these systems would it take for us to dry out the air to the point we reduce the normal amount of rain? Imagine it would be orders of magnitude higher than I can imagine, but an interesting question. Thank you for the great content.
Find out about the moisture that rises from the ground on a daily basis.
desalination can be done without power input (other than ambient heat) flood a field to a shallow depth covered by a clear slanted roof. water evaporates condenses on the roof and rolls downhill to a collection point. mush slower than using a boat load of electricity but it works best in areas that are dry and hot, which is also where the most water is needed. after several cycles of flooding and evaporating - collect the salt left behind as a bonus
You should REALLY watch some Thunderf00t's videos about past "miracle" water-out-of-air companies (that all failed). It's the basic thermodynamics that does not agree with using electricity to cool and condense water out of air. You even list the numbers yourself, although I have an impression that you don't grasp them: an 11 kilowatt machine running nonstop rocudes a few 100 liters of water per day. The cost of electricity (which you avoid in your final "cost calculation") is ENORMOUS. It would be the largest (by far) consumer of electricity in households ever. It would quickly turn the water shortage into a severe energy shortage (not solving the water shortage at all). I am hugely disappointed by this video (having enjoyed some of your videos in the past).
Also don't forget that when one person takes water from the air, it's not instantly replaced. If you had a whole neighborhood full of these devices they would all be struggling against each other and the total water production per unit would be much lower
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The big problem with all of these is the same problem that there has always been. The primary places in the world that have water shortages just so happen to also be the places in the world that don't have a lot of moisture in the air. Notice how the condensing machine say 0.5 to 8 gallons per hour? Most of the places that actually need water are going to be condensing much further towards the 0.5 gallons than the 8 gallons. Usually if there's lots of water in the air there's also lots of water available to drink....
You're baiting Thunderfoot to debunk these, right?
what a sad world view. nothing here to be debunked... just comes down to commercialization and costs etc.
@@TwoBitDaVinci Yes, nothing to be debunked (again) here when scientist have already debunked it decades ago. Infomercial clickbait.
@@TwoBitDaVinci the issue isn't does it work, the issue is the energy consumption. As another poster pointed out if it's cheaper to truck in the water the extraction system is pointless. There's been alot of startup scams in this particular space.
Thunderfoot isn't an expert in anything except his Chemistry PhD. Therefore his opinion is no better than anyone else's. The only thing he's got is a posh accent, some editing skills and an ego the size of a blue whale.
@@jackinthebox301 you're missing the point, these three systems are not commercially viable. 50k upfront and 1k per month is ridiculous, others needing land AND daily fog only fits a very small population of the world.
Giving a company a platform to promote energy intensive processes to the detriment of the environment is not morally right. There are far cheaper and better solutions to water shortages. This video fails to provide a balanced comparison and comes across as a promotional video.
Here in Arizona, my AC condensate is producing 10-14 gallons a day during monsoon as a byproduct of cooling my home. In dryer weather, 5 gallons is common and we make use of it watering plants. ZERO investment.
Don't forget that with the passive systems you still have to pump water through a filter and possibly a UV disinfecting light and into a storage vessel, then pump to faucets.
And, like others surely have commented, have a look at rainwater storage, and separating drinking water from water needed for washing. flushing, etc.
We had one of these 'tsunami like' units in our basement in the 1960s already, we called it a 'de-humidifier.' It made a lot of noise and a fair bit of heat but it did yield several gallons of water per day. Of course we didn't want it and ran it down the drain.
Another great video! Your focus is on human drinking water production but domestic and commercial irrigation is a huge consumer of that same precious potable water too. Many air capture systems in the discussions can and are being used today for irrigation allowing for more human consumable water to be available as demand increases and available water decreases due to climate change in desert regions. Larger commercial buildings are big producers of AC condensate. I have personally witnessed 3-4 gpm of condensate from a single air handler on a hot day and researched using it for irrigation. Sometimes its a easy retrofit and sometimes not. There are two buildings I am aware of that have their own capture systems in addition to internal biological waste water treatment systems that use the reclaimed water for toilets and irrigation. One is in Santa Monica and the other is in San Francisco. Ricky, you may look at those buildings and MCRD's (Marine Corp Recruit Depot) biological waste water treatment system as an interesting topic for a future video. The local USGBC may be able to help you find contacts. As for other capture systems, I have read a couple of papers where material scientists are looking at biomimicry for improved capture designs such as the Namibian Beetle carapace which has unique ridges designed to capture the fog water and funnel the water to its mouth. They have incorporated it into a low cost net design significantly improving effectiveness. Some communities in African deserts build sculptures which are quite effective at capturing water from the air. There isn't going to be one technology to solve our water issues but a portfolio approach from efficiency to technologies appropriate for the geographical and societal locations. Your videos give me hope for the future and are quite thought provoking. Keep up the great work.
WHY IS IT GREAT? Nothing new. WASTE OF TIME
@@timbrown9305 May not be new to you but most people I come across are uninformed about this issue and Ricky did a great job making it understandable to the general public who need to and want to become more knowledgeable about this important issue. Speaking to the choir in this format can be waste of time but then again there may be something in this you didn't know.
@@slojos IT SAYS "BREAKTHROUGH" The English language is a very specific language. If we are going to bastardize it then count the intelligent people out.
Problem is I have seen this persons posts before and he is guilty of doing this more than just this one time. Deemed "clickbait" is an appropriate reaction given the public display of ignorance on this title. Ignorance is not a mean word... It is a very specific word just like "breakthrough"
Here is the edit>>>
Because of your response to me I have also contacted the sponsor of the post and asked them to no longer sponsor someone who has, not only once but several times used "clickbait" titles in an attempt to get views and responses.
The real sad fact is that Leonardo here does not have to lie in the Title... Just be honest. Many others who have been mislead by him feel the same way. If we can get sponsorship taken away it will force honesty.
@@slojos Also, "most people I come across are uninformed about this issue" is what you wrote. Are you really going around to lots of people and interviewing them about this. Highly unlikely so that also makes your statement false. False meaning a lie. Did you lie to me? Be honest because if you read other comments here it looks like I am in a crowd that also is aware that this is not "breakthrough technology" Your poor attempt at using that obviously untrue statement says more about you than you may be willing to admit. Did you think you were going to "put me in my place". I feel like I am writing to a child. You did not go around and ask all your buddies if they had heard of this before. Even if you did it does not change the statement of "breakthrough technology" and its meaning. If this is what our educational system has brought us to then you are a fine example of the need for change in our inadequate educational system. Think about what you are really saying before you say it. The ignorance of people responding here is absolutely shameful.
At LEAST you were honest enough to clearly remind us about relative humidity & temperature affects performance. I think a good unit wld chase the dew point factor via a dewdrop sensor input!
Living in the Arizona desert, water is a major concern. The “fog” nets that can be used in a more arid environment is worth watching. However, I suspect the net would not survive ten years in our intense heat/UV environment.
One point about the ZeroMass system is the noise, it’s LOUD.
Great news and information. Well presented. Easy to understand, great graphics and well explained.
My hat is off to you Brother.
Ty so very much
God-bless you and your family 👪 ❤️
How are dehumidifiers breakthrough technology? When I was a kid in the 70s we had them in our home. They were loud, but they produced several gallons of water a day.
This video is correct in stating that classical atmospheric water generators are too expensive because of the extremely high electricity bill. They are also very bad for the environment: if you operate them with grid electricity, which is still mostly fossil fuel based, particularly at night, you will effectively burn 1 gallon of fuel to produce 5 gallons of water. Fog nets do not work if you have normal or even high humidity in the air, you really need fog droplets (this only happens if relative air humidity is 100 %). The hydrogel does need energy to remove the water from the gel; probably they will use solar thermal energy. Therefore, they will need solar thermal collectors, which will again be the main cost driver. I agree with other comments that it is better to use seawater desalination (if available) or to collect rain water and you should always recycle waste water. I also agree with the debunking videos of Thunderf00t. Atmospheric water generators are only acceptable if they are operated with 100 % solar energy and the cost is only justified in regions with extremely little rain _and_ where groundwater is depleted. In other words, it only makes sense in regions where people depend on very expensive water truck deliveries. Unfortunately, a growing number of people live in such regions. The main driver of cost for solar atmospheric water generators is the surface area of solar collectors. With 1500 square ft. of Source panels, at a cost of around 125,000 USD, you will get around 50 gallons of water per day. Our company, Aquahara, is testing more efficient, lower-cost panels. You will get around 50 gallons per day with around 1000 square ft. of solar collectors, at a much lower cost than Source. If you also invest in a wastewater recycling system that recycles 70 % of the water, 50 gallons of atmospheric water will result in total water supply of 150 gallons per day. Again, this investment only makes sense in regions with extremely little rain _and_ where groundwater is depleted. Companies such as Source Global and Aquahara are still continuing research to reduce the cost. Think of it like the photovoltaic industry 15 years ago, where solar panels were 10 times more expensive than today.
In the nineties I opened up Air, Water & Ice inc to promote the use of condensate as pure drinking water and clean clear ice.
The other aspect was using the water from a de humidifier for reef keepers.
In ancient India they built giant rainwater catch basins called step wells. Unfortunately most of them fell into disrepair during the illegal British occupation of India and were abandoned. I think we can reboot this concept with modern technology modern catch basins can be lined with concrete to prevent leaking and contamination. The basins can also be covered to prevent evaporation. Intake channels can be equipped with hydroelectric generators to make up for losses in solar electric production during the monsoon season. A large system like this could store massive amounts of water for the long dry season.
These numbers assume that you use the water to take shower, but we can simply use salt water for shower which is better for our skin! If we use the water for just drinking then it’s enough for a whole apartment building
First step is to reduce the amount of water one uses by, for example, buying a circulation shower that filters and re-uses the water. This should save a lot of both money and water every year.
Those Tsunami machines makes no sense from a economic or energy perspective. All that wasted electricity could be saved for something else, like cooling the house *and* charging a car at the same time.
Fog nets on the other hand is a proven technology, cheap, requires no electricity, and last a long time. Hydrogel also sounds like a promising technology.
Simple rain barrels are also a option if it rain regularly where one lives.