I live in arizona and water is often on my mind. I think reuse of water is highly underrated with the tech that we have. Tucson has mandated that all new construction split grey and black water for secondary use, sadly I moved a bit south for my new house and didn't get to request for the plumbing to be split. I think that too many people are afraid of reusing water when in reality we can reuse a vast amount of water on site again and again just by using electrocoagulation, settling tanks, filtration, UV and ozone. Water in our town is crazy cheap though and cost is always the ultimate driver to move innovation.
Water's cheap until it isn't. 🚱 Ask the Rio Verde residents who used to get cheap water from Scottsdale, AZ! (Also see: Hohokam civilization, and probably the Anasazi before them.) 😎✌️
It's amazing how well Nevada use their water, i'm not american but i've read that they managed to grow exponentially while using the same amount of water for decades.
Growing up near Seattle gives a completely opposite perspective. I think everyone should have rain downspout generators on their houses. But we don't have rainwater collection limits - instead we have rainwater overflow governors, to prevent sewers from overflowing with rain water, during our regular torrential downpours.
@@StephenGillie I live in Southern California and installed 5 barrels to collect rain water. I keep a couple of goldfishes in each to control mosquitoes. I don't use much of this water for garden plants since I switched my lawn to succulents and don't/can't use it in the house (I only use 10 gallons per day of municipal water), so the water is pretty much just for the fishes. What was useful was when I converted my lawn was constructing a swale. This swale acts as an empty "pool" in the middle of my garden that rain water from the roof empty into and percolates into the ground to help recharge ground water.
Peltier devices are ridiculously inefficient and are not immune to breakdown themselves. I had a small refrigerator that used a peltier cooler and it only worked at peak cooling for a week or so (it originally made a small amount of ice but quickly was unable to do so) and ceased function entirely after a few months of decreasing cooling capacity. I never tried to measure the power draw of it but all Peltier coolers are known for being an order of magnitude less efficient than a cooler using the refrigeration cycle.
appreciate how you touched on non potable uses for this water - it's crazy how much water is treated and processed just to be used for flushing a toilet
I was thinking the same, and it's not like it would be hard to educate people to the fact that some taps in the house are non-potable while others are for drinking water!
@@droopy_eyes you can also do a Japanese technique where you wash you hands with the incoming tank fill water. You just add a bowl above the tank and a tube that is attached to the fill valve. If you want a slightly more elegant solution.
A good idea is a grey water recycling system, a 1000 L sump that take in the water from showers and washing machines, filters it, and pumps it up to a tank that feeds the toilets.
@@killcat1971 I built a recycling shower pump that recycled the drain water back into the cold side of a thermostatic mixer. Since the temp you like to shower at is always a few degrees lower at the drain the shower used much less Hot water. The only downside was it took a long time for the soap in the water to clear out of the cycle. If I were to attempt again I'd make a switch that could use fresh cold to purge the soapy water
Water from air is a terrible idea unless it is completely free, like collecting the water that collects in an HVAC system for non-potable use. Running a dehumidifier just uses way too much energy and doesn't even produce potable water. The problem is the phase change or latent heat. It takes a LOT of energy to get water to phase change from a gas to a liquid. The environment does it for free (to us) so it doesn't cost us any money or energy.
Well, the cost of extracting water from air is much much higher than purifying existing water supplies. If oil companies can create pipelines for oil, there's no reason why countries can't promote the same for pipelines of sea water for desalination or even local desalination followed by piping moderately pure water to a distant location that needs it.
You're starting from the wrong end. Assume there is a rational reason and proceed from there. My guess is that water isn't nearly as valuable as oil. Oil is now around $70/barrel, which is just under $2/gallon. Water's not nearly as expensive, unless you buy disposable plastic water bottles.
@@grizwoldphantasia5005 Add transportation costs, and "large" quantities of water become prohibitively expensive. Having pipelines to transport the water to locations would serve the world in more way than one. Especially, it would help reduce coastal erosion damage.
@@grizwoldphantasia5005 But air extraction (other than passive collection, which produces tiny amounts for the effort) is still more expensive than building pipelines, gallon-for-gallon. That's the point. It's ridiculously inefficient.
theoretical possible: yes comercial sens? no bacterial Problems? yes, legionella main Problem: high water % in air is found in tropical places where water is abundend anyway. low water % in air like a desert is only milliliters per DAY for hugh amount of electricity
I think with projects like these it just result of lobbing of high tech industries for non-economical solutions. And maybe a wide spread nativity in Deus ex machina. The ‘fog catcher’ is a good example of this, because this the function that trees do naturally. I have seen a thousand projects like this yet not one succeeding.
This is pretty neat info, I use the water generated from my Air Conditioner to water my garden, during summer my simple Air Conditioner pulls out at least 1-2 Gallons a day. On very humid days closer to the 2 gallons not so humid days its still a little over a gallon. Pass it thru a carbon filter and I have clean and clear water. I also clean the coils regularly.
It is crazy humid in Taiwan and other South East Asian countries. BTW, maybe you could do a video on the wind farm installations off the coast of Taiwan? On my recent trip my cousin's husband told me about them off the coast near Hsinchu. We had planned to go see but ran out of time. :/
😅 Your conclusion! Yes, there's got to be a good use for condensate! And all building and plumbing codes should allow (require?!!) gray-water systems without "special use" permits or other bureaucratic obstacles. That should be the norm, especially for those of us with wells and septic systems! 😎✌️
Well if we had fusion we could just skip it all and just use salt water allowing nature to do its thing instead of taking from fresh water sources. Wish we could figure out what to do with the brine though.
If my time in research has taught me anything it's: "there is no silver bullet". It's always a gradual process of solving some issues and accidentally creating new ones
@@jamesduston9292 Nuclear is the most expensive energy generation method by a wide margin. Hydro generation needs a suitable climate - mountains or a large river and lots of rain, if you're trying to generate water from the air it suggests that neither of these features are present.
Here in Seattle we put water reclaim systems in buildings sometimes. Unfortunately, they tend to get mothballed after not too long because they are so maintenence intense.
A better idea is rain catching. Many arid regions suffer from flash floods. Catching that water and keeping it in the ecosystem would be a game changer, and enrich the soil as well.
I agree with you. I've been on rain for over 10 years. great water. The problem with rain is you need lots of storage. I have $10K in tanks. That gives me a rollling 10 year supply.
Rainwater harvesting is an established technology in use for decades now, it does have some hassles but it's a mature technology. The one thing that might be holding wider adoption is when regular water is too cheap. If the capital expenditures of installing a rainwater harvesting system in your property equal 30+ years of just paying your water bills, most people won't bother.
@@No0dz I agree. In my case I would have had to spend over $40K for a new water well. $10K for water tanks was an easy decision. the other problem is that you must have a large enough lot to locate the tanks. However, storage is the main problem with most water sources except wells.
that's unfair! you can't cover all aspects (energy cost, contamination) in a 14 minutes round up. So many kickstarters needed several years (each one) to find out, scamming people along the way, giving thunderf00t great content to debunk!
You made me look up flash desalination and maaan was I not prepared... somehow all tech that's meant to provide drinking water in dry areas is either super complicated, either super expensive, but usually both!
the problem with this is that the only places where this is feasible are humid and in those places there are other far more efficient ways of extracting water or moving it.
It's worth mentioning that while the simplicity of Peltier elements is appealing in these kinds of applications, they have absolutely abysmal efficiency compared to compression-cycle heat pumps except in very limited, specialized scenarios. At scale, it's almost always more economically viable to use a regular compression cycle and eat the maintenance costs. If your plan isn't viable that way, doing it with Peltier modules instead won't improve things.
Here in Western Australia I used to keep my pool always topped up by running my refrigerated AC drain line into the pool, as I found it would produce enough water in few days to fill a small kids pool, almost never had to top up the pool.
Thunderf00t has done a number of videos debunking water-from-air claims. The main problem is that if you have enough water in the air to make collecting is practical, you're usually in a pace where it rains a lot. Places with serious water insecurity either have very dry air or have more general infrastructure problem.
The most famous of it are the debunk on Fontus water collector and the MIT research to extract the water from air to "ensure water availability in dry, arid, and poor countries" (yes, it was the ACTUAL MIT research, from the best university in the world)
Yeah that's just not true bro. Look at the entire California coastline. DENSE fog every night, but dry af during the day and no rain for half the year. There are many places on Earth where this technology would be perfect. It's disturbing that people feel so passionate about criticizing sustainable technology. Like, what is the end game? Preserving the status quo? Dooming us to a myriad of environmental and resource catastrophies because he feels smart being a naysayer?
@@aidandavis5550 Yes, that's true, I've seen the fog in San Francisco myself. However, I also noticed a large ocean. You're going to find it less energy-intensive to desalinate water by reverse osmosis than condensing it out of fog. That's going to count whenever you are in pumping-distance of the coast. Also, I don't like being your strawman. I am not against sustainable energy, I'm an enthusiastic supporter of it. But the maths around getting water out of air doesn't add up, most of the time. Think of it this way: When you run your aircon you get a lot of condensed water that you have to get rid of. You can probably fill a bucket in half an hour if you're in a humid place and you leave the doors and windows open (like I did at my birthday party and the aircon leaked and made a mess). If you're in the tropics, like me, then it's humid and you get loads of water a surprising amount. The trouble is, that aircon takes a lot of energy. If you're in an arid place you still have to use a lot of energy and you get a lot less water. So if you have loads of free electricity, fine, you can air-mine water in the Sahara, but even cheap solar isn't cheap enough to do that, yet.
Thanks for the vidja! Here in Florida a single low-end dehumidifier from Amazon (~$200-$300 U.S.) running 24/7 generates about 30liters of H2O per day. It is more than enough to water my tomatoes and herb garden. I have argued for close to fifty years that there is ***NO*** environmental-type problem in Western Civilization that cannot be solved by cheap, ubiquitous usable energy. If we had spent the last 40+ years building more and newer nuclear plants, wind, solar etc etc etc and TRULY tried to make electricity "Too Cheap To Meter" we could solve the "water crisis" and most other "environmental crises" with very little effort. Forever Chemical? Well you smack any chemical with enough energy and simply dissociate it into its constituent parts, harvest and utilize as feedstocks. E.G. superfund dirt heated to 1500-2000 degrees C dissociates anything toxic into nothing. Collect any metals/radioisotopes and concentrate. Again it is a lack of vision, not a lack of solutions. But small minds would rather scream and shout and run about and doom us all to a dim, dull future in the dark. THANKS GRETA.... ***sigh***
TL;DR: No, it's not possible. The amount of moisture in the air is minuscule, and the amount of energy required to condense it is ridiculous in comparison, even at scale. There. Saved you 15 minutes.
I never thought about the idea of using AC and Dehumidifier condensate for non-potable uses, especially as some places still use drinking water for toilets/sewage related stuff, as well as heating/cooling stuff that requires water (at least where its not required to be potable, pure, or at least devoide of metal or microbial contaminates or pollution)
In Antarctica, you would still have the opportunity to collect water with a heater, if you inverted the roles of the air exchanger and the heat pump in the active refrigeration approach. There's a runoff line on modern residential furnaces for exactly this reason.
It's interesting that in the developed world we always look for ways to get more (more energy, more water...) instead of what's the limit of how little we can live with and still be comfortable. I live 50 miles north of San Diego where the average per person use water use is 70 gallons per day. I wanted to see how little I can live with so I replaced the lawn with succulents, installed low-flow shower/faucet heads and reused my shower water (flush toilet) and dish wash water (garden plants). I live comfortably on 10 gallons per day. That's nothing. I've read that entire families of 4 in dry regions of the world surviving on 5 gallons per day.
This is the way. We need to do de growth and reduce wasteful activities. Plus rainwater harvesting with permaculture and create habitats that produce humidity leading to more rain.
You missed the most economical way to condense water from the air. Circulate cold ocean water from about 500 meters depth which can provide the cooling power very cheaply. Far cheaper than vapor compression or reverse osmosis. No waste brine. No, it cannot be used in Arizona, but it can make a big impact in many parts of the world. Also, forget Peltier devices, far too inefficient.
Interesting idea. Not sure whether it's cheaper in terms of upfront investment. Heat exchangers are expensive, never mind a decently-sized heat exchanger that is sufficiently corrosion-resistant to be able to hold sea-water.
This technology among with passive cooling is pretty interesting. I just saw a video a few weeks back about this system that was completely electricity free using both evaporative and radiative cooling. Those systems have been around but this one had potential to freeze water! I was out of it on dialysis so forgive me, but they could already get pretty close to freezing. I beleive 41.1 but the materials were not there yet. Ugh wish I could find the video or team! These systems are great for decentralization regardless if other methods are used.
Here in Seattle, I collect and use rainwater in my home, and haven't used citiwater in 25 years. My barrels, five gallon buckets and 600 gallon steel tank bought from a metal junkyard for $30 has cost me only a few dollars. Why throw rainwater away and then buy citiwater? For me, this is mainly a hobby combined with my distaste for waste.
OK, so atmospheric water generation would need 500 to 850 Wh per liter. Seawater reverse osmosis, by comparison, needs 300 to 400 Wh per liter. In Aruba, their seawater reverse osmosis system takes in seawater from beach wells rather than the open ocean.
I've been doing thought experiments and calculations on exactly this, but semi passively. BaSO4 nanoparticles on an IR reflective substrate can cool things around 4.5C below ambient through radiative cooling, so at 75% RH you're at the dew point without input energy. Couple that with an axial compressor as a first stage to both force air down a channel and raise the pressure (and thus temperature since PV=NRT), and supersaturated air can be decompressed against a collection mesh. Only need a few degrees from decompression, so I don't expect it to consume an prohibitive amount of energy, espec when the reflective top surface would be great for supercharging bifacial solar panels.
For graywater, sure, but not worth the time except in very dry places. For drinking water, no, FAR more economical to push water around the world in boats, trains, and trucks.
In Arizona - yes, that Arizona - in the summer I use no tap water for my trees and plants. Between the monsoon rains - which water I do not collect, just the falling rain on the plants - and my three split unit air conditions, I have more than enough for all my plants. The air condition produce about 25 gallons per day. Now, if only I could afford to get solar panels to run them...
i used to have a slippery mossy spot where my ac condensate line dripped... it was on the hot sunny side of the house. made a long skinny planter box, i grew corn, snap peas an many different crops all along the wall, the plants use up the water and keep the sun off the walls and windows... the entire house stays much cooler and free food too !
When washing clothes in my washing machine, I sort out the cleanest clothes for washing in detergent, then save the detergent laden water for a second load of soiled wash. I'll reuse the rinse water for the second load of wash, then save that rinse water to use as wash water for the next load of washing. Plus, I use rainwater collected from my roof for all my water needs including clothes washing. Here in Seattle, there's ample rain that makes that easy to do nine months of the year, but more challenging during the summer seasonal drought. However, I haven't had occasion to use citiwater for many years. I use my wash water recycling only during that summer seasonal drought. The rest of the year floods of rainwater are easily collected. This is mainly a hobby for me, but I also am a frugal person and the idea of letting useful water run to the ground and then pay for citiwater makes no sense to me. I live in a single family house which makes such water collection easy.
Jon, There's one refrigeration technology that works great in hot climates... that can be configured to use no electricity - Absorbent Refrigeration. Not to be confused with the sorbents such as silica gel. Absorbent refrigeration requires no moving mechanical parts (pumps, valves, etc.), is much more efficient than compression refrigeration, and works by *heating* a working fluid, usually anhydrous ammonia with a little hydrogen, to it's boiling point. The condensation part of the cycle can pull heat out well below the freezing point of water. Solar collectors can easily get the heat needed. The single biggest downside is the use of ammonia. A problem such that Einstein (yea, that Einstein) and Leó Szilárd came up with a different process - and received a patent on it. Other than this - great video on a very pertinent topic for many folks around the world.
There is only mention of the energy costs and not of the relative value of water. I refuse to ever travel to Santorini because of how much water it imports due to the travel industry. It would seem that solutions to reducing, at the very least, the costs of importation of fresh water in specific circumstances is a more practical discussion than the abstraction of water collection methods
The fog net is perfect for mountain villages with thick forests.. usually rivers in that area is much lower in the ridges and valleys, and villages in the upper mountains lack water
Feel like your coverage of sorbant methods (e.g. MOFs) was too short. Theres a LOT of progress in that field (in part thanks to Darpa funding). Also, they can absorb water all day; it's just that without a power source, it can only be cycled by day/night temperature changes. But with a solar panel, you can collect and discharge water from it many times throughout the day, and there's LOTS of progress happening in this field.
It literally makes no sense. None of the areas where it would work (practically speaking) need it. It's too high tech for the primitive people that need it to grasp. That's why they haven't already developed such a simple solution.
There's a survival water harvesting technique of digging a hole in the beach, putting a clear piece of plastic sheeting over it, and collecting the condensate that drips off the inside. This of course only works in the sunlight, but why can't it be scaled up? Have a shallow artificial lagoon alongside the shore, a big greenhouse structure over it, with gutters inside along the bottom. If set up right, this could even be connected to the ocean, and currents could naturally cycle water through. Have nets or something at either end to keep fish out, and it'd be a source of fresh water. There would still be treatment needed, but no more than a freshwater source for public water.
I've been using HVAC condensate for watering indoor plants for several years. My tap water is very hard, and it will cause a build up of salts in house plants, which isn't good for them. While outside air in summer has a relative humidity below 20%, indoor air is about 50%, which means there is plenty of water available. I can get more than 1 gallon a day on hot days. Otherwise, anything I don't collect just makes a big wet spot on the ground.
Legally in the USA water produced from such devices Must be put through distillation or similar process and sterilization before it can be considered safe to drink. This accounts for a majority of the cost of operating the unit. And is left to the end user to do.
I remember a vacation in Alexandria in 2013 where we had an AC running and the condensate would drip into a bucket in the balcony. There was a LOT of condensate. We probably had to drain the bucket 3 times during the day or it would overflow.
Thermoelectric/Peltier/TEC coolers are also horribly inefficient compared to vapor compression technology. Their coefficient of performance (CoP) is much lower. Like single digit percentage efficiency. If you put in a watt of electricity, you'll get like 50mW of heat pumping across the TEC. TECs are great for portable or niche compact uses but do not scale well.
VERY, interesting topic. About interior AC collection : the point is, if you want to live longer, you already need to run a very specific air treatment inside your house : Filtered air intake of course (at least with activ carbon), AND your interior should be at a higher pressure than outside. (the oposite of most actual ventilation systems). SO when you make water out of your AC system with interior air, it is mostly unharmed( but not completely). As with any water recovery system, it must be followed by a serious water treatment. If your air is already clean, then your water membranes will last way longer. I'm in North of France, with 70 to 80% humidity average in summer, I'm runing such system based on standard AC (total 9kw max) water collection, we are making about 2,5L of fresh water every hour. (about 60L per day) it is enough for all our needs and our plants are VERY happy with that.
In my country, 0.5 kWh of electricity costs 0.036 $, 1 liter of tap water costs 0.00043 $. So for this technology to be economically viable here it should be at least 80 times cheaper.
If used for irrigation, then it doesn't need to be cleaned further, though high salt concentrates could be a long term issue for the soil, too. What types of salt? When fusion energy becomes a thing, reliable drinking water i would assume becomes less of an issue. Sam Altman from OpenAI just made a deal with Microsoft and Helion for being provided with fusion energy by 2028. That is a countdown.
Ngl, I always always ALWAYS enjoy your content, but the diagram you chose for the vapor compression cycle in 8:18 is... not the best. The other important factor; where the compressed water after leaving the condenser is expanded, providing lots of cooling due to loss of energy; is not too clearly labelled. Also typically, dotted lines is used to describe energy flow and solid lines are material flow, so while water is seen to be removed in the evaporator, it can be a bit confusing without the expansion or energy labeling. Still great stuff though, a nice refresher on current freshwater-from-anthropogenic tech and what's most conventional right now.
Having lived in Houston, Texas n Scottsdale, Arizona for 15 years of my career, I can really understand the trials of water and tribulations of Engineers to conserve it.
I would like to work with company free of charge to collect more water. The device is ok but collection system is not ok, we switch on fan and air start blowing , we feel more air, same way we need to collect more fog , mean we need to work on giving directions to fog . It's not difficult job. If we succeed we can collect water evaporating from seawater during day hours and fog water during night hours. Machines and system will remain same but with larger out put of water. Jay Bharat. Jay Bharat.
Some places treat their waist water till it’s good enough to drink and then to avoid the gross factor they use it to replenish the aquifer, I think LA or another city around there does it. The HVAC system would be good in that because you can just pipe the water to a existing drain.
moisture farmers meant they would harvest every bit of H2O possible from the atmosphere, then send them to deep underground reservoir tanks for later collection by the winner of the highest bids of course ... have you seen a single plant or any dam' thing other than sand on that planet? :D
assuming such a logic, perhaps before moisture farmers came along, Tatooine perhaps was (a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away) a wettish, even "tropical" or earth-like planet :) .
@@takingbacktheplanet in the lore Tatooine was actually like you said wettish and tropical. The tuscon raiders were the former life forms of the planet. They destroyed the planet with nuclear bombs if I remember right
Is atmospheric water harvesting responsible for no rain? Removing water from air through nets or machine can change the atmosphere. This technology is gaining momentum in many countries. Rainfall is delayed in many countries.
I think I could recycke almost all water used at my home and use it for subsurface irrigation of ornamental plants. It needs a filtering system to prevent clogging, but the bacteria isnt an issue because its functionaly like a septic drain field. The sanitary issue isnt as toxic as handling kitty litter - some bad stuff there for sure. Piping waste water to a central plant is 1800s tech that we can move beyond, especially when a rural septic system is in use as is my scenario.
Years ago I heard a story about the Whissen windmill. This machine invented by an Australian was said to extract water from the air and did not need an external power source. It was probably bullshit but was interesting to hear and think about.
denmark, finland, norway, netherlands, etc have some of the highest and cleanest water in the world! Water regulation is very strict in Netherlands and their so good they don't need and don't use chlorine for filtering their water which is great I think that also including denmark which I believe is like number one or in the top 5 highest and cleanest tap water
ocean water reverse osmosis still has problem. the brine produced is environmental hazards. it is also still expensive The Arab prince even trying to get iceberg from Antartica
If we can use undrinkable water to flush toilets we have achieved something. I keep clean plastic containers wherever there's a hot water tap so I can catch the cold water while waiting for the hot water to emerge. If everybody did this the savings would be substantial as I'm amazed at how much I save.
A whole bunch of factors affect the economics of producing water in this way. But there is one application area where the main considerations are not economic: emergency water supply. With such technologies, you can get hugely important water in situations where you might otherwise be in dire straits, such as a boat at sea, a desert, or simply when the usual utilities are totally unavailable, such as right after a natural disaster.
This "thanks" is for the 20 or so of your incredibly well done videos I have watched or (mostly) listened to.
They're sooooo good and different and deep dives. He's so close to so much he covers it gives him an edge.
So cool 😮
I live in arizona and water is often on my mind. I think reuse of water is highly underrated with the tech that we have. Tucson has mandated that all new construction split grey and black water for secondary use, sadly I moved a bit south for my new house and didn't get to request for the plumbing to be split. I think that too many people are afraid of reusing water when in reality we can reuse a vast amount of water on site again and again just by using electrocoagulation, settling tanks, filtration, UV and ozone. Water in our town is crazy cheap though and cost is always the ultimate driver to move innovation.
Water's cheap until it isn't. 🚱 Ask the Rio Verde residents who used to get cheap water from Scottsdale, AZ! (Also see: Hohokam civilization, and probably the Anasazi before them.) 😎✌️
It's amazing how well Nevada use their water, i'm not american but i've read that they managed to grow exponentially while using the same amount of water for decades.
Las Vegas is much more efficient than Phoenix. Arizona needs to stop pretending water's unlimited.
Growing up near Seattle gives a completely opposite perspective. I think everyone should have rain downspout generators on their houses. But we don't have rainwater collection limits - instead we have rainwater overflow governors, to prevent sewers from overflowing with rain water, during our regular torrential downpours.
@@StephenGillie I live in Southern California and installed 5 barrels to collect rain water. I keep a couple of goldfishes in each to control mosquitoes. I don't use much of this water for garden plants since I switched my lawn to succulents and don't/can't use it in the house (I only use 10 gallons per day of municipal water), so the water is pretty much just for the fishes.
What was useful was when I converted my lawn was constructing a swale. This swale acts as an empty "pool" in the middle of my garden that rain water from the roof empty into and percolates into the ground to help recharge ground water.
Peltier devices are ridiculously inefficient and are not immune to breakdown themselves. I had a small refrigerator that used a peltier cooler and it only worked at peak cooling for a week or so (it originally made a small amount of ice but quickly was unable to do so) and ceased function entirely after a few months of decreasing cooling capacity. I never tried to measure the power draw of it but all Peltier coolers are known for being an order of magnitude less efficient than a cooler using the refrigeration cycle.
appreciate how you touched on non potable uses for this water - it's crazy how much water is treated and processed just to be used for flushing a toilet
I was thinking the same, and it's not like it would be hard to educate people to the fact that some taps in the house are non-potable while others are for drinking water!
@@droopy_eyes you can also do a Japanese technique where you wash you hands with the incoming tank fill water. You just add a bowl above the tank and a tube that is attached to the fill valve. If you want a slightly more elegant solution.
A good idea is a grey water recycling system, a 1000 L sump that take in the water from showers and washing machines, filters it, and pumps it up to a tank that feeds the toilets.
@@killcat1971 I built a recycling shower pump that recycled the drain water back into the cold side of a thermostatic mixer. Since the temp you like to shower at is always a few degrees lower at the drain the shower used much less Hot water. The only downside was it took a long time for the soap in the water to clear out of the cycle. If I were to attempt again I'd make a switch that could use fresh cold to purge the soapy water
Water from air is a terrible idea unless it is completely free, like collecting the water that collects in an HVAC system for non-potable use. Running a dehumidifier just uses way too much energy and doesn't even produce potable water.
The problem is the phase change or latent heat. It takes a LOT of energy to get water to phase change from a gas to a liquid. The environment does it for free (to us) so it doesn't cost us any money or energy.
Well, the cost of extracting water from air is much much higher than purifying existing water supplies. If oil companies can create pipelines for oil, there's no reason why countries can't promote the same for pipelines of sea water for desalination or even local desalination followed by piping moderately pure water to a distant location that needs it.
Been saying that for years now. If we can ship X Thousand of barrels of fuel across the nation, then how come we can't do that with water?
@@28ebdh3udnav because it doesnt make economic sense. it doesnt matter how long you say something stupid; it doesnt change the fact its stupid.
You're starting from the wrong end. Assume there is a rational reason and proceed from there. My guess is that water isn't nearly as valuable as oil. Oil is now around $70/barrel, which is just under $2/gallon. Water's not nearly as expensive, unless you buy disposable plastic water bottles.
@@grizwoldphantasia5005 Add transportation costs, and "large" quantities of water become prohibitively expensive. Having pipelines to transport the water to locations would serve the world in more way than one. Especially, it would help reduce coastal erosion damage.
@@grizwoldphantasia5005 But air extraction (other than passive collection, which produces tiny amounts for the effort) is still more expensive than building pipelines, gallon-for-gallon. That's the point. It's ridiculously inefficient.
theoretical possible: yes
comercial sens? no
bacterial Problems? yes, legionella
main Problem: high water % in air is found in tropical places where water is abundend anyway.
low water % in air like a desert is only milliliters per DAY for hugh amount of electricity
I think with projects like these it just result of lobbing of high tech industries for non-economical solutions. And maybe a wide spread nativity in Deus ex machina. The ‘fog catcher’ is a good example of this, because this the function that trees do naturally. I have seen a thousand projects like this yet not one succeeding.
I think collecting rainwater with large tanks makes your topic simpler.
Just cranking them out. Awesome topics!
This is pretty neat info, I use the water generated from my Air Conditioner to water my garden, during summer my simple Air Conditioner pulls out at least 1-2 Gallons a day. On very humid days closer to the 2 gallons not so humid days its still a little over a gallon. Pass it thru a carbon filter and I have clean and clear water. I also clean the coils regularly.
Water from air definitely has a bad rep from all the dehumidifier kickstarter scams😂
It is crazy humid in Taiwan and other South East Asian countries.
BTW, maybe you could do a video on the wind farm installations off the coast of Taiwan? On my recent trip my cousin's husband told me about them off the coast near Hsinchu. We had planned to go see but ran out of time. :/
Didn't mention the many hilarious Kickstarter scams that skimmed millions from their marks with this😀
😅 Your conclusion! Yes, there's got to be a good use for condensate! And all building and plumbing codes should allow (require?!!) gray-water systems without "special use" permits or other bureaucratic obstacles. That should be the norm, especially for those of us with wells and septic systems! 😎✌️
I wonder how many technologies like this suddenly become feasible if we could massively reduce the cost of energy
Well if we had fusion we could just skip it all and just use salt water allowing nature to do its thing instead of taking from fresh water sources.
Wish we could figure out what to do with the brine though.
If my time in research has taught me anything it's: "there is no silver bullet". It's always a gradual process of solving some issues and accidentally creating new ones
There is nuclear and hydro that can reduce cost of energy but there is no societal will for that.
@@jamesduston9292 Nuclear is the most expensive energy generation method by a wide margin. Hydro generation needs a suitable climate - mountains or a large river and lots of rain, if you're trying to generate water from the air it suggests that neither of these features are present.
@@jamesduston9292 Nuclearophilia is a neurotic disease.
Your videos are as varied as my thoughts. I love every single one of them. THANK you for posting all of these.
The main problem being, the places where these things might be a workable solution generally have liquid water laying around.
Here in Seattle we put water reclaim systems in buildings sometimes.
Unfortunately, they tend to get mothballed after not too long because they are so maintenence intense.
Another technology you didn't cover is MOF's , metal organic frameworks, which I think has great potential
I think this is under the "sorbent" category... but also missed out on a MOF Gideon joke ;D
"We know the rites. A man’s flesh is his own; the water belongs to the tribe.” --Fremen
A better idea is rain catching. Many arid regions suffer from flash floods. Catching that water and keeping it in the ecosystem would be a game changer, and enrich the soil as well.
I agree with you. I've been on rain for over 10 years. great water. The problem with rain is you need lots of storage. I have $10K in tanks. That gives me a rollling 10 year supply.
Planting forests on mountain slopes and building dams. Both things we've been doing for a long time
Rainwater harvesting is an established technology in use for decades now, it does have some hassles but it's a mature technology. The one thing that might be holding wider adoption is when regular water is too cheap. If the capital expenditures of installing a rainwater harvesting system in your property equal 30+ years of just paying your water bills, most people won't bother.
@@No0dz I agree. In my case I would have had to spend over $40K for a new water well. $10K for water tanks was an easy decision. the other problem is that you must have a large enough lot to locate the tanks. However, storage is the main problem with most water sources except wells.
My A/C condensate water keeps a fig tree growing vigorously.
Yeah, I don't think that we're getting Moisture Farms just yet...
10:33 One more time for the people in the back!
Double the fun... and at no extra cost... Bonus!
Nice pun at the end! 👏
Have you seen thunderf00t and or Technology connection on the topic?
that's unfair! you can't cover all aspects (energy cost, contamination) in a 14 minutes round up. So many kickstarters needed several years (each one) to find out, scamming people along the way, giving thunderf00t great content to debunk!
You made me look up flash desalination and maaan was I not prepared... somehow all tech that's meant to provide drinking water in dry areas is either super complicated, either super expensive, but usually both!
The notion "Time immemorial" is not that long ago... It notes a date in the year 1189A.D. so only about 900years ago...
the problem with this is that the only places where this is feasible are humid and in those places there are other far more efficient ways of extracting water or moving it.
It's worth mentioning that while the simplicity of Peltier elements is appealing in these kinds of applications, they have absolutely abysmal efficiency compared to compression-cycle heat pumps except in very limited, specialized scenarios. At scale, it's almost always more economically viable to use a regular compression cycle and eat the maintenance costs. If your plan isn't viable that way, doing it with Peltier modules instead won't improve things.
Here in Western Australia I used to keep my pool always topped up by running my refrigerated AC drain line into the pool, as I found it would produce enough water in few days to fill a small kids pool, almost never had to top up the pool.
Thunderf00t has done a number of videos debunking water-from-air claims. The main problem is that if you have enough water in the air to make collecting is practical, you're usually in a pace where it rains a lot. Places with serious water insecurity either have very dry air or have more general infrastructure problem.
The most famous of it are the debunk on Fontus water collector and the MIT research to extract the water from air to "ensure water availability in dry, arid, and poor countries" (yes, it was the ACTUAL MIT research, from the best university in the world)
Is that the guy with all the "feminists are a bunch of vagina nazis" videos? Couldn't take his science stuff seriously after I saw those
@@thesquatchdoctor3356 He stopped doing those, he just does pseudoscience debunk stuff now I think
Yeah that's just not true bro. Look at the entire California coastline. DENSE fog every night, but dry af during the day and no rain for half the year. There are many places on Earth where this technology would be perfect. It's disturbing that people feel so passionate about criticizing sustainable technology. Like, what is the end game? Preserving the status quo? Dooming us to a myriad of environmental and resource catastrophies because he feels smart being a naysayer?
@@aidandavis5550 Yes, that's true, I've seen the fog in San Francisco myself. However, I also noticed a large ocean. You're going to find it less energy-intensive to desalinate water by reverse osmosis than condensing it out of fog. That's going to count whenever you are in pumping-distance of the coast.
Also, I don't like being your strawman. I am not against sustainable energy, I'm an enthusiastic supporter of it. But the maths around getting water out of air doesn't add up, most of the time.
Think of it this way: When you run your aircon you get a lot of condensed water that you have to get rid of. You can probably fill a bucket in half an hour if you're in a humid place and you leave the doors and windows open (like I did at my birthday party and the aircon leaked and made a mess). If you're in the tropics, like me, then it's humid and you get loads of water a surprising amount. The trouble is, that aircon takes a lot of energy. If you're in an arid place you still have to use a lot of energy and you get a lot less water. So if you have loads of free electricity, fine, you can air-mine water in the Sahara, but even cheap solar isn't cheap enough to do that, yet.
Thanks for the vidja!
Here in Florida a single low-end dehumidifier from Amazon (~$200-$300 U.S.) running 24/7 generates about 30liters of H2O per day. It is more than enough to water my tomatoes and herb garden. I have argued for close to fifty years that there is ***NO*** environmental-type problem in Western Civilization that cannot be solved by cheap, ubiquitous usable energy. If we had spent the last 40+ years building more and newer nuclear plants, wind, solar etc etc etc and TRULY tried to make electricity "Too Cheap To Meter" we could solve the "water crisis" and most other "environmental crises" with very little effort.
Forever Chemical? Well you smack any chemical with enough energy and simply dissociate it into its constituent parts, harvest and utilize as feedstocks. E.G. superfund dirt heated to 1500-2000 degrees C dissociates anything toxic into nothing. Collect any metals/radioisotopes and concentrate. Again it is a lack of vision, not a lack of solutions.
But small minds would rather scream and shout and run about and doom us all to a dim, dull future in the dark.
THANKS GRETA....
***sigh***
TL;DR: No, it's not possible. The amount of moisture in the air is minuscule, and the amount of energy required to condense it is ridiculous in comparison, even at scale. There. Saved you 15 minutes.
I never thought about the idea of using AC and Dehumidifier condensate for non-potable uses, especially as some places still use drinking water for toilets/sewage related stuff, as well as heating/cooling stuff that requires water (at least where its not required to be potable, pure, or at least devoide of metal or microbial contaminates or pollution)
3:42 MISSING TIMESCALE.
30 litres of water per square meter ... for the installation, ever? 30 litres total? That's expensive.
In Antarctica, you would still have the opportunity to collect water with a heater, if you inverted the roles of the air exchanger and the heat pump in the active refrigeration approach. There's a runoff line on modern residential furnaces for exactly this reason.
It's interesting that in the developed world we always look for ways to get more (more energy, more water...) instead of what's the limit of how little we can live with and still be comfortable. I live 50 miles north of San Diego where the average per person use water use is 70 gallons per day. I wanted to see how little I can live with so I replaced the lawn with succulents, installed low-flow shower/faucet heads and reused my shower water (flush toilet) and dish wash water (garden plants). I live comfortably on 10 gallons per day. That's nothing. I've read that entire families of 4 in dry regions of the world surviving on 5 gallons per day.
This is the way. We need to do de growth and reduce wasteful activities.
Plus rainwater harvesting with permaculture and create habitats that produce humidity leading to more rain.
You missed the most economical way to condense water from the air. Circulate cold ocean water from about 500 meters depth which can provide the cooling power very cheaply. Far cheaper than vapor compression or reverse osmosis. No waste brine. No, it cannot be used in Arizona, but it can make a big impact in many parts of the world. Also, forget Peltier devices, far too inefficient.
Interesting idea. Not sure whether it's cheaper in terms of upfront investment. Heat exchangers are expensive, never mind a decently-sized heat exchanger that is sufficiently corrosion-resistant to be able to hold sea-water.
This technology among with passive cooling is pretty interesting. I just saw a video a few weeks back about this system that was completely electricity free using both evaporative and radiative cooling.
Those systems have been around but this one had potential to freeze water! I was out of it on dialysis so forgive me, but they could already get pretty close to freezing. I beleive 41.1 but the materials were not there yet. Ugh wish I could find the video or team!
These systems are great for decentralization regardless if other methods are used.
Was it this one? ua-cam.com/video/R_g4nT4a28U/v-deo.html
Here in Seattle, I collect and use rainwater in my home, and haven't used citiwater in 25 years. My barrels, five gallon buckets and 600 gallon steel tank bought from a metal junkyard for $30 has cost me only a few dollars.
Why throw rainwater away and then buy citiwater?
For me, this is mainly a hobby combined with my distaste for waste.
Another superb video! 🎉😊
OK, so atmospheric water generation would need 500 to 850 Wh per liter. Seawater reverse osmosis, by comparison, needs 300 to 400 Wh per liter.
In Aruba, their seawater reverse osmosis system takes in seawater from beach wells rather than the open ocean.
I love these little lectures, always feel like I learn something!
How much electricity will require to desalination using solar thermal? I don't think except pump anything require electricity.
I've been doing thought experiments and calculations on exactly this, but semi passively.
BaSO4 nanoparticles on an IR reflective substrate can cool things around 4.5C below ambient through radiative cooling, so at 75% RH you're at the dew point without input energy.
Couple that with an axial compressor as a first stage to both force air down a channel and raise the pressure (and thus temperature since PV=NRT), and supersaturated air can be decompressed against a collection mesh.
Only need a few degrees from decompression, so I don't expect it to consume an prohibitive amount of energy, espec when the reflective top surface would be great for supercharging bifacial solar panels.
For graywater, sure, but not worth the time except in very dry places. For drinking water, no, FAR more economical to push water around the world in boats, trains, and trucks.
In Arizona - yes, that Arizona - in the summer I use no tap water for my trees and plants. Between the monsoon rains - which water I do not collect, just the falling rain on the plants - and my three split unit air conditions, I have more than enough for all my plants. The air condition produce about 25 gallons per day. Now, if only I could afford to get solar panels to run them...
Your videos have been extremely good. My top channel on youtube and definitely worth supporting by giving monthly to your Patreon. Cheers from Kenya.
We're going to have blasters... And flying cars. TV promised.
Ancient Iranians had water harvesting devices in the desert. You can still see the artifacts when you visit their remote villages.
i used to have a slippery mossy spot where my ac condensate line dripped... it was on the hot sunny side of the house. made a long skinny planter box, i grew corn, snap peas an many different crops all along the wall, the plants use up the water and keep the sun off the walls and windows... the entire house stays much cooler and free food too !
When washing clothes in my washing machine, I sort out the cleanest clothes for washing in detergent, then save the detergent laden water for a second load of soiled wash. I'll reuse the rinse water for the second load of wash, then save that rinse water to use as wash water for the next load of washing.
Plus, I use rainwater collected from my roof for all my water needs including clothes washing.
Here in Seattle, there's ample rain that makes that easy to do nine months of the year, but more challenging during the summer seasonal drought. However, I haven't had occasion to use citiwater for many years. I use my wash water recycling only during that summer seasonal drought. The rest of the year floods of rainwater are easily collected.
This is mainly a hobby for me, but I also am a frugal person and the idea of letting useful water run to the ground and then pay for citiwater makes no sense to me.
I live in a single family house which makes such water collection easy.
Atmospheric water generation? That's called a dehumidifier.
If getting water from the air were a viable thing, people would be collecting the water that air conditioners take out of the air.
A lot of people do.
Dehumidifiers too
Jon, There's one refrigeration technology that works great in hot climates... that can be configured to use no electricity - Absorbent Refrigeration. Not to be confused with the sorbents such as silica gel. Absorbent refrigeration requires no moving mechanical parts (pumps, valves, etc.), is much more efficient than compression refrigeration, and works by *heating* a working fluid, usually anhydrous ammonia with a little hydrogen, to it's boiling point. The condensation part of the cycle can pull heat out well below the freezing point of water. Solar collectors can easily get the heat needed. The single biggest downside is the use of ammonia. A problem such that Einstein (yea, that Einstein) and Leó Szilárd came up with a different process - and received a patent on it.
Other than this - great video on a very pertinent topic for many folks around the world.
There is only mention of the energy costs and not of the relative value of water. I refuse to ever travel to Santorini because of how much water it imports due to the travel industry. It would seem that solutions to reducing, at the very least, the costs of importation of fresh water in specific circumstances is a more practical discussion than the abstraction of water collection methods
Fusion power will solve it all.
why dont places like greenland or snowy places just export the frozen freshwater
The fog net is perfect for mountain villages with thick forests.. usually rivers in that area is much lower in the ridges and valleys, and villages in the upper mountains lack water
Why do they need moisture farms when they have spaceships and tractor beams just pull a comet to tattooine
It's BS. Costs lots of energy and moisture is needed in already dry ecological aread.
Microplastics in water may be concerning coming from that condensing sheet (if that is plastic)
Feel like your coverage of sorbant methods (e.g. MOFs) was too short. Theres a LOT of progress in that field (in part thanks to Darpa funding). Also, they can absorb water all day; it's just that without a power source, it can only be cycled by day/night temperature changes. But with a solar panel, you can collect and discharge water from it many times throughout the day, and there's LOTS of progress happening in this field.
P.s. MOF Tarkin was right there
It literally makes no sense. None of the areas where it would work (practically speaking) need it.
It's too high tech for the primitive people that need it to grasp. That's why they haven't already developed such a simple solution.
Desert Beetle
If you look up that Beatle, it does sick handstands to collect water
There's a survival water harvesting technique of digging a hole in the beach, putting a clear piece of plastic sheeting over it, and collecting the condensate that drips off the inside. This of course only works in the sunlight, but why can't it be scaled up? Have a shallow artificial lagoon alongside the shore, a big greenhouse structure over it, with gutters inside along the bottom. If set up right, this could even be connected to the ocean, and currents could naturally cycle water through. Have nets or something at either end to keep fish out, and it'd be a source of fresh water. There would still be treatment needed, but no more than a freshwater source for public water.
“Or maybe, im trying too hard to make something out of thin air” lmao, nice way to end it.
I've been using HVAC condensate for watering indoor plants for several years. My tap water is very hard, and it will cause a build up of salts in house plants, which isn't good for them. While outside air in summer has a relative humidity below 20%, indoor air is about 50%, which means there is plenty of water available. I can get more than 1 gallon a day on hot days. Otherwise, anything I don't collect just makes a big wet spot on the ground.
"trying too hard to make something out of thin air" I see what you did there
I love how you're doing dew diligence ;-)
from my experience the water produced by those water generators taste odd and upsets my stomach, I would avoid them if possible
Legally in the USA water produced from such devices Must be put through distillation or similar process and sterilization before it can be considered safe to drink. This accounts for a majority of the cost of operating the unit. And is left to the end user to do.
10:40 same sentence is said double.
I remember a vacation in Alexandria in 2013 where we had an AC running and the condensate would drip into a bucket in the balcony. There was a LOT of condensate. We probably had to drain the bucket 3 times during the day or it would overflow.
you should look into "The Moses West Foundation" - their AWG machines are already working with the US military...
Thermoelectric/Peltier/TEC coolers are also horribly inefficient compared to vapor compression technology. Their coefficient of performance (CoP) is much lower.
Like single digit percentage efficiency. If you put in a watt of electricity, you'll get like 50mW of heat pumping across the TEC. TECs are great for portable or niche compact uses but do not scale well.
😐Depending on local regulations and requirements of course 😐... 🙂Depending on local regulations and requirements of course🙃
VERY, interesting topic.
About interior AC collection : the point is, if you want to live longer, you already need to run a very specific air treatment inside your house : Filtered air intake of course (at least with activ carbon), AND your interior should be at a higher pressure than outside. (the oposite of most actual ventilation systems). SO when you make water out of your AC system with interior air, it is mostly unharmed( but not completely). As with any water recovery system, it must be followed by a serious water treatment. If your air is already clean, then your water membranes will last way longer. I'm in North of France, with 70 to 80% humidity average in summer, I'm runing such system based on standard AC (total 9kw max) water collection, we are making about 2,5L of fresh water every hour. (about 60L per day) it is enough for all our needs and our plants are VERY happy with that.
dehumidifiers lol
In my country, 0.5 kWh of electricity costs 0.036 $, 1 liter of tap water costs 0.00043 $.
So for this technology to be economically viable here it should be at least 80 times cheaper.
If used for irrigation, then it doesn't need to be cleaned further, though high salt concentrates could be a long term issue for the soil, too. What types of salt?
When fusion energy becomes a thing, reliable drinking water i would assume becomes less of an issue.
Sam Altman from OpenAI just made a deal with Microsoft and Helion for being provided with fusion energy by 2028. That is a countdown.
"depending on local regulations and requirements, ofc. depending on local regulations and requirements, ofc."
Ngl, I always always ALWAYS enjoy your content, but the diagram you chose for the vapor compression cycle in 8:18 is... not the best. The other important factor; where the compressed water after leaving the condenser is expanded, providing lots of cooling due to loss of energy; is not too clearly labelled. Also typically, dotted lines is used to describe energy flow and solid lines are material flow, so while water is seen to be removed in the evaporator, it can be a bit confusing without the expansion or energy labeling.
Still great stuff though, a nice refresher on current freshwater-from-anthropogenic tech and what's most conventional right now.
Tatooine moment
The global water cycle was disproven by thunderf00t!!!!!! /s
Having lived in Houston, Texas n Scottsdale, Arizona for 15 years of my career, I can really understand the trials of water and tribulations of Engineers to conserve it.
I would like to work with company free of charge to collect more water.
The device is ok but collection system is not ok, we switch on fan and air start blowing , we feel more air, same way we need to collect more fog , mean we need to work on giving directions to fog .
It's not difficult job.
If we succeed we can collect water evaporating from seawater during day hours and fog water during night hours.
Machines and system will remain same but with larger out put of water.
Jay Bharat.
Jay Bharat.
Quintillion, Murican for a trillion 10¹⁸
From the air., such overblown verbage!
Luke Skywalker should get sued by the Fremen of Arrakis for taking credit of their water capturing technologies.
Bro, this one is the first & only video where I couldn't found any new 'researched insights'... Just collection of known/obvious facts.
are we sure about that 1-200$ USD per square meter? that doesn't sound cheap at all, that's kind of ridiculous.
Some places treat their waist water till it’s good enough to drink and then to avoid the gross factor they use it to replenish the aquifer, I think LA or another city around there does it. The HVAC system would be good in that because you can just pipe the water to a existing drain.
moisture farmers meant they would harvest every bit of H2O possible from the atmosphere, then send them to deep underground reservoir tanks for later collection by the winner of the highest bids of course ... have you seen a single plant or any dam' thing other than sand on that planet? :D
assuming such a logic, perhaps before moisture farmers came along, Tatooine perhaps was (a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away) a wettish, even "tropical" or earth-like planet :) .
@@takingbacktheplanet in the lore Tatooine was actually like you said wettish and tropical. The tuscon raiders were the former life forms of the planet. They destroyed the planet with nuclear bombs if I remember right
Is atmospheric water harvesting responsible for no rain? Removing water from air through nets or machine can change the atmosphere. This technology is gaining momentum in many countries. Rainfall is delayed in many countries.
I think I could recycke almost all water used at my home and use it for subsurface irrigation of ornamental plants. It needs a filtering system to prevent clogging, but the bacteria isnt an issue because its functionaly like a septic drain field. The sanitary issue isnt as toxic as handling kitty litter - some bad stuff there for sure. Piping waste water to a central plant is 1800s tech that we can move beyond, especially when a rural septic system is in use as is my scenario.
Years ago I heard a story about the Whissen windmill. This machine invented by an Australian was said to extract water from the air and did not need an external power source. It was probably bullshit but was interesting to hear and think about.
denmark, finland, norway, netherlands, etc have some of the highest and cleanest water in the world! Water regulation is very strict in Netherlands and their so good they don't need and don't use chlorine for filtering their water which is great I think that also including denmark which I believe is like number one or in the top 5 highest and cleanest tap water
ocean water reverse osmosis still has problem.
the brine produced is environmental hazards.
it is also still expensive
The Arab prince even trying to get iceberg from Antartica
If we can use undrinkable water to flush toilets we have achieved something. I keep clean plastic containers wherever there's a hot water tap so I can catch the cold water while waiting for the hot water to emerge. If everybody did this the savings would be substantial as I'm amazed at how much I save.
A whole bunch of factors affect the economics of producing water in this way. But there is one application area where the main considerations are not economic: emergency water supply. With such technologies, you can get hugely important water in situations where you might otherwise be in dire straits, such as a boat at sea, a desert, or simply when the usual utilities are totally unavailable, such as right after a natural disaster.