[HN Gopher] Google open sources solar atmospheric water generator
___________________________________________________________________
Google open sources solar atmospheric water generator
Author : johmathe
Score : 223 points
Date : 2022-03-17 18:42 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| lsb wrote:
| One of the pioneers in the field is still going strong:
| http://yaghi.berkeley.edu/
| aaron695 wrote:
| [deleted]
| babelfish wrote:
| What happens at X when a project like this is discontinued? Do
| the employees get shuffled around, let go...?
| [deleted]
| kajecounterhack wrote:
| I've heard some of the members of the project will get a payout
| for deciding to end the project (kind of an incentive to not
| keep failing projects going), and employees get a length of
| time to find a new home within Google / X. Though it's the same
| as any transfer process: you have to apply for available roles
| within the company, do fit chats, maybe do interviews, etc.
| gianpaj wrote:
| https://github.com/google/h2e_technical_documentation/blob/m...
| bushbaba wrote:
| Fixed the title for you: Google "deprecates" solar atmospheric
| water generator.
| colesantiago wrote:
| accurate.
| buescher wrote:
| Too bad Google X couldn't invent indoor plumbing instead.
| opless wrote:
| An open source dehumidifier ?
|
| Haven't there been umpteen attempts at this? I thought there's
| not that much water in the air. The volume of air to move must be
| crazy.
|
| Maybe I should read TFA
| hobs wrote:
| As far as I know every "water from air" is literally a
| dehumidifier and is going to produce dirty water at 1000x the
| cost of just driving water anywhere on earth.
| opless wrote:
| This guy has done several busting videos on similar devices
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EGTRX6pZSns
| anonporridge wrote:
| So, a solar powered dehumidifier?
|
| At first pass, I would guess that something like this would
| primarily be useful in places with naturally high humidity, which
| aren't likely to have a shortage of water in the first place, no?
|
| Maybe the argument is that the natural sources of water are
| dirty, and extracting from the air is automatically clean and
| safe to drink, but it still seems like it may be more resource
| efficient to invest in water treatment, not a fleet of
| dehumidifiers.
| sbradford26 wrote:
| It might have some use in coastal areas where salt water can
| contaminate wells sometimes. But you are right it might just be
| worth pursuing something like desalination powered by solar
| power in those situations.
| outworlder wrote:
| > and extracting from the air is automatically clean and safe
| to drink
|
| It isn't, though. Bacteria accumulate. Dehumidifiers are
| generally very nasty. Although bacteria can then be killed (not
| sure about their toxins), while other contaminants may not be
| very easy to get rid of.
|
| Almost every place on Earth has humidity above 0%. Which makes
| it possible to extract water, even if it's very inefficient.
| People have condensed water successfully in deserts.
| kragen wrote:
| Bacteriostatic materials aren't rocket science. One of the
| best dehumidifier materials, copper, is also one of the best
| bacteriostats. It's just expensive.
| cwkoss wrote:
| I want to make an orchard on a hill in the maritime pacific
| northwest. Its a somewhat odd climate where the time that gets
| hottest is when it also tends to be dryest (east coast tends to
| be wetter when hotter).
|
| I wonder if something like this (possibly with less focus on
| "clean" water - it's rural and breezy, so I don' think raw output
| would harm trees...) could be suitable for generating summer
| water for tree irrigation.
|
| I wish the overview PDF had more labels...
| claudiulodro wrote:
| Orchard on the coast is tricky. I don't know specifically where
| you're located, but on the Oregon coast the only fruit trees
| OSU says will grow are apple and cherry (and sometimes pear).
| I've had better luck going with native bushes where you don't
| need to worry as much about supplemental water: huckleberry,
| salal berry, salmonberry, blackberry if you can maintain them,
| etc. Work with the environment rather than try to force the
| environment to do what you want. :)
| cwkoss wrote:
| Yep! Those are all on my list.
|
| I'm hoping heavy woodchip mulching can get me enough water
| retention to keep trees happy (we certainly get plenty of
| water the other ~9 months of the year!), but some
| supplemental water during the hot dry summer would probably
| significantly expand species and variety options.
|
| Have a small well that should be able to help some... but
| looking at permaculture techniques (hugelkulture, swales etc)
| and possibly moisture farming as a potential way to improve
| moisture conditions in a 'greener' way then energy intensive
| pumping. Might try to build a pond high up on the hill to
| filter down over the dry season.
|
| Kind of a paradoxical region, because plants want lots of
| water when there's lots of sun, and here we generally get one
| or the other :-/
| throwawayboise wrote:
| If it's extracting water from the air, "hot and dry" does not
| seem to be a good situation. You'd want humid air.
|
| Any water condensed from the air is going to be "pure" by most
| measures. It's essentially distilled water.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Fair point, I thought part of the energy was being used for
| purification before I read the overview pdf.
|
| The site is ~ 1/4 mile from the ocean, so I think the air
| won't be totally dry... but just won't get a lot of rainfall.
| Mostly wondering if there's a good way to 'moisture farm' to
| keep the soil around trees moist. Ideally with no more power
| than a small solar panel located right next to the device, so
| I don't have to run power there (there's well and power at
| the bottom of the hill... but moisture farming would be
| cooler than running irrigation :-P).
| outworlder wrote:
| > Any water condensed from the air is going to be "pure" by
| most measures. It's essentially distilled water.
|
| And you can freely give it for spherical cows to drink in
| vacuum.
|
| Keeping any such device free from contamination is very
| difficult. Bacteria love the moist environments. Leave it
| unattended and you have moist dust. Lovely.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| The purity of the water you get from the air is limited by
| how much dust is on the air you work with.
|
| You can improve it easily by filtering. It's much easier than
| filtering the final water. But it's not necessarily pure.
| kragen wrote:
| No. The output is orders of magnitude too low. Trees stay cool
| by evaporating water. The solar energy they're absorbing by
| doing this is a lower bound on the energy you have to put in to
| condense that same water out of the air. But tree leaves
| convert about 75% of the sunlight that hits them into heat
| (they're a bit more than 75% "efficient" at doing something
| they don't want) while PV solar panels are only about 21%
| efficient. So you'd need more than three times as much solar-
| panel area as tree leaf area for that to work out.
| justbrandon2u wrote:
| Just dig a well. Or grab some ocean water and filter it. Then
| build a big pipe. Problem could be solved worldwide in less than
| 10 years. But then what?
| daenz wrote:
| >ocean water
|
| Requires desalination, which is more complicated than simply
| filtering.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| That depends on what you consider "filtering". You can
| desalinate using reverse osmosis, which pretty much is
| filtering.
| bduerst wrote:
| RO filters are not price accessible the vast majority of
| people who do not currently have access to potable water.
| Same with desalination.
| kempbellt wrote:
| Desalinization does not have to be complicated.
|
| You can build a simple desalinator (aka, a solar still) with
| a couple bins, some glass/plexiglass, and access to sunlight.
| Preferably in an enclosed system to better contain heat and
| prevent water vapor from escaping.
|
| No filters to replace, and it will run for as long as you
| feed it water.
|
| Best link I could find to explain the process:
| https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/61215
| yazaddaruvala wrote:
| Where do you put the left over salt? At those levels it's
| both toxic for animals and toxic for plants.
|
| Even putting it back into the ocean isn't simple. If you do
| it in one big batch, you would kill everything in that
| location for a while. If you do it slowly, that isn't
| simple.
| golemiprague wrote:
| 8note wrote:
| Sell it? Sea salt is an in demand product
| outworlder wrote:
| There will be impurities, it won't be just NaCL.
| manquer wrote:
| This is just advanced desalination using natural evaporation as
| input.
| blacksqr wrote:
| Estimated $150 price point.
|
| Requires an electric motor to circulate air.
|
| What is the intersection of people who a) can afford an
| expenditure of $150, b) have reliable access to electricity and
| can pay for it, and c) can't get their hands on five liters of
| clean water a day?
| amelius wrote:
| You can use solar energy.
| [deleted]
| bun_at_work wrote:
| Many people don't have good access to clean water, over 2B
| according to the repo's readme.
|
| Those people probably cannot afford $150, but the goal of the
| project wasn't $150, it was lower.
|
| The unit is supposed to be solar powered, so access to
| electricity isn't strictly necessary, in the sense of being
| able to connect to the grid. They just need sunlight.
|
| There is a sweet spot of cost, where those who need it can't
| afford it, but nonprofits, billionaire philanthropists, and
| local governments can afford to purchase and distribute such
| devices where necessary. In cases where the need for clean
| water greatly outweighs the supply, such entities see a good
| return on investment, simply by improving the health of those
| people there.
|
| Furthermore, X is a moonshot program at Google. They attempt
| solutions for big problems with high likeihood of failure. Are
| you suggesting they shouldn't do this with their money printing
| ad machine? It seems like any good that comes out of that
| company should be celebrated, and in this case they are sharing
| a bunch of work on solving what will be an increasing large
| problem for the entire world.
| Ansil849 wrote:
| Are there any consumer-grade atmospheric solar water generators
| on the market right now? I did a very quick search and didn't
| find anything. Is there anything like this that people can buy
| right now?
| colechristensen wrote:
| You could buy a few solar panels, an inverter, a dehumidifier,
| and a water filter and be fine. The problem is sizing the power
| generation and dehumidifier to match and generate an amount of
| water meaningful to you.
|
| Regardless you need quite a bit of solar to get a decent amount
| of water.
| igorhvr wrote:
| If you don't mind having to add the solar kit for power
| (separate purchase) https://www.accairwater.com/home-
| atmospheric-drinking-water-... and similar products could be
| used..
| tppiotrowski wrote:
| Quick Google found this: https://www.source.co/
|
| Edit: There's also this water bottle I remember seeing a while
| back on Kickstarter or Indigogo. It doesn't seem like they
| actually sell it on the website: https://fontus.at/
| hanniabu wrote:
| It says clean, but isn't it only as clean as the surrounding
| air? For example if you used this next to a manufacturing
| plant spewing chemicals into the air, won't these
| contaminants be captured by the condensation and make it into
| the water?
| Ansil849 wrote:
| Super interesting, thanks. Kind of surprised more people
| aren't talking about this.
| pjy04 wrote:
| Yes, this is the company in Arizona. They can do about 4-5
| liters a day without an external power source.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| Check out Thunderf00t's videos cricising solar water collectors,
| e.g.:
|
| - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc7WqVMCABg - Zero Mass Water:
| BUSTED! "Honestly, it drives me crazy how many people have
| reinvented the dehumidifier, put a solar panel on it, and the
| media has danced around like theyve just saved the world!"
|
| - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPvXnmBIO7o - Self-filling
| water bottle: BUSTED! " _The fact that its thermodynamically
| impossible seem to stop 'science communicators' from promoting
| this. The fact that its a really dumb, and not particularly
| inventive idea didnt stop the 'science communicators' from
| promoting this. Kinda depressing really._"
|
| Problems include:
|
| - it's much cheaper to bring in a tanker of water from somewhere
| else, than for the electricity to do this.
|
| - It's a dehumidifier; in places where the air is wet, it rains,
| and you don't need it. In places where you need it, you need it
| _because_ there 's not much water, so it doesn't work well.
|
| - It's going to be prone to growing bacteria; warm and moist.
|
| - It needs a vast volume of air; when water becomes steam it
| expands 1000x. Which means to go the other way you need at least
| 1000 litres of steam dragged through for a litre of water. Air
| can be around 4% water says Britannica.com, so 20,000 litres of
| humid air for a litre of water if it's perfectly efficient.
| Thunderf00t's estimate is 50,000 litres of air for 1 litre of
| water; And the air needs to be cooled. That needs big fans and
| lots of power (air is heavy to move).
| csours wrote:
| I will never check out a Thunderfoot video. He is a hateful
| pitiful man.
| seanw444 wrote:
| He's generally not wrong. But I agree, his approach is pretty
| obnoxious.
| space_rock wrote:
| Thunderf00t is hit and miss. Some videos and scepticism, small
| mindedness, long pessimistic rant without substance and no
| debunking
| kragen wrote:
| Dehumidifiers aren't what's thermodynamically impossible, of
| course; Fontus was just making quantitative performance claims
| that were thermodynamically impossible.
|
| You don't need to cite YouTubers to figure out how much water
| air contains. You can just consult a standard psychrometric
| chart:
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PsychrometricChart.S...
|
| You can see from that chart that at, for example, 20 degrees
| and 30% relative humidity (which, if you're not aware, is
| pretty dry), you have about 5 mg of water per gram of air, or
| about 5 grams of water per kg of air, which is about 0.8 cubic
| meters (1.2 g/liter). So if you want to produce 10 liters of
| water per day for your family, you need to run 2,000 cubic
| meters of air through your dehumidifier. (Or a bit more because
| you can't reduce it to 0% humidity.)
|
| That might sound like a lot, but it's _per day_ , so it works
| out to 49 cfm, which is not "big fans and lots of power". If
| we're talking about a 300 mm square aperture it's 260 mm/s of
| airflow, which requires a totally insignificant amount of power
| compared to the actual refrigeration involved. This is not
| going to fit nicely on your bicycle like in the fraudulent
| Fontus videos but it is entirely reasonable as a household
| appliance.
|
| Solar electricity is free if you aren't using it for something
| else.
|
| As for bacterial growth and filtering, yeah, that's a real
| design constraint, and it's one that HVAC systems have fallen
| down on in the past with disastrous results, but it's not some
| kind of unsolved engineering problem. Every air conditioner,
| sea voyage, and water tower deals with it. Here in Argentina
| just about every house has a rooftop drinking-water tank, where
| we control bacterial growth with chlorination, by impregnating
| the tank plastic with bacteriostatic agents, and by making the
| tanks opaque so algae can't grow. Thousands of years ago,
| mariners dealt with it by dropping a silver coin in each
| amphora of drinking water.
|
| It would be a more difficult problem if a dehumidifier were
| warm and moist, but actually it's cold and moist.
|
| As for the relative costs of tankers and electricity, well,
| that varies depending on where you are.
| noogle wrote:
| > in places where the air is wet, it rains, and you don't need
| it.
|
| - Rain water collected in ponds/rivers may be
| contaminated/infested.
|
| - Lack of fresh water in the ocean/islands is also an issue.
|
| The two things that are available almost everywhere are air and
| sun.
| kragen wrote:
| Rainwater cisterns are a viable option if you have rain.
| schmichael wrote:
| A commercial system is in use on the Warm Springs reservation
| in Oregon: https://www.opb.org/article/2021/08/10/warm-springs-
| leaders-...
| vesinisa wrote:
| Their paper is open access:
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03900-w
|
| They claim that this device with 1m2 footprint could "well
| within thermodynamic limits" alleviate thirst for a billion
| people living in "tropical regions" (daytime relative humidity
| 30%-90%).
|
| I already look forward to the debunk. It all seems very high-
| level. My money is on that these regions where the device would
| be viable do not actually suffer of lack of access to drinking
| water to start with - not to the tune of a billion thirsty
| people at least.
| dogleash wrote:
| If they're giving it away for free, that must mean there is a
| fatal flaw they could never design around and are confident
| nobody else will either. What's the point then?
|
| At least tell us why it's a dead end.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| I read their "Patent Non-Assertion Pledge", it's hard to
| interpret - they seem to retain lots of rights, as far as I can
| tell, it's not really 'giving it away for free'. Anyone wanting
| to develop this as a commercial product would probably have to
| call a lawyer first.
| czbond wrote:
| https://storage.googleapis.com/x-prod.appspot.com/files/H2E%.
| ..
|
| They won't sue you for using the findings or design, but they
| still have U.S. Patent on it and our pledging that Google
| will not sue those who use this intellectual property nor
| will anyone they transfer the patent to be able to sue.
|
| What they call "infringement" just means that since they hold
| a patent others "copying" it would technically be infringing
| the patent - but they pledge not to sue.
| toothpicked wrote:
| They don't opensource modern Google Search and it is also
| flawed...
| carabiner wrote:
| It just looks like a proof of concept. They tested it in very
| controlled conditions. Did not see how it withstands being
| knocked over, dropped, covered in dust from storms. Their
| market is Africa. How many of the towns have road access? Will
| the product be damaged in transport on very rough roads? Can
| they be stacked in transport, and how many high (or will they
| be crushed)? Will adhesives fail after n temperature cycles in
| the blazing sun + nighttime cold? Can it be repaired by people
| living there?
|
| Almost every part looks to be made from scratch. The only thing
| off the shelf is the pink insulation foam. Can any of this be
| sourced in the target markets?
| jker wrote:
| Possibly they've already derived all the PR value from it they
| can, and further development of it wouldn't be a good ROI for
| them. Cynical take, to be sure, but also the most realistic
| one.
| extrapickles wrote:
| They likely had trouble making it cheap and durable enough for
| the target market. Looking at the design files, the unit is
| quite fragile, thanks to the cheap vacuum formed plastic.
|
| What needs to be done is using some of the GIS tools they
| released to find good locations for air->water setups, is
| figure out what materials and manufacturing techniques are
| available in those locations. This way you are more likely to
| design something that makes a difference. Anything built with
| materials or techniques that are not local will break, and they
| will be unable to repair because they do not have access to
| either the materials or the tools needed to do repairs.
| pdevr wrote:
| There may be multiple reasons for this, some of which may be
| those you stated, but couldn't altruism be at least an
| important part of the reason they shared this?
| ben_w wrote:
| Or that they just don't see how it's a market fit for their
| business.
| dogleash wrote:
| Que? Isn't "don't see how it's a market fit" just startup
| speak for "it's not economically viable"? That would fall
| squarely into the category of design failures I was talking
| about. It's not like we don't know any mechanism to cause
| condensation from air.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| It's not economically viable with their usual profit
| margin, on a market large enough to pay for their fixed
| costs, with the suppliers and labor they have around, and a
| lot of other constraints.
|
| That doesn't mean it's useless for everybody. So they
| publishing it may improve somebody's life.
| rat9988 wrote:
| Lowering cost by manufacturing at scale is knowledge they
| don't have, and they do need to make it financially viable.
| Other people might have it and make it viable.
| fallat wrote:
| This. They did excellent internal work, decided it's not for
| them, but did something good and want to share it. Just
| because it's not profitable for them doesn't mean it was a
| waste - they can use their new knowledge in other areas.
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| Here's their summary blog post:
|
| https://x.company/blog/posts/sharing-project-h2e-with-the-wo...
|
| Allow me to snip a few quotes: "After three years of work, the
| team felt confident they could build a device that would
| produce water for $.10 per liter; however, it would have taken
| significant development work and iteration to prove feasibility
| at $.01 per liter. Additionally, the next phase of work for the
| project looked to be heavily focused on hardware integration
| and mass production expertise -- not X's sweet spot."
|
| And:
|
| "Given these factors, it became clear that X wasn't best suited
| to take the work forward, and one of the best ways X could have
| an impact now on the problem of access to safe drinking water
| was to share what we've learned."
|
| I have no idea what the prior state of the art of modelling
| viable areas for harvesting was (I presume this is probably
| where X made the largest contribution). As the blogpost
| identifies... X is not really the best group to tinker with
| large scale, low cost manufacturing prototyping and scale up.
| dekhn wrote:
| this is just standard boilerplate at X which really means
| "the team and/or the executive sponsoring the project got
| bored and/or realized things required more professional work,
| and/or the idea wasn't really that great in the first place
| and the exterior world realized that"
| usrusr wrote:
| The ad market for targeting the water deprived turned out to be
| smaller than expected?
| Iolaum wrote:
| Is it me or does this project have Dune vibes?
|
| Pity that it couldn't move forward.
| x3n0ph3n3 wrote:
| That's because it's a fundamentally dumb idea and the promises
| made by proponents violate the laws of thermodynamics.
| RenThraysk wrote:
| Fundamentally flawed idea. Places that need water are the most
| are dry, they have no humidity, as there is little to no water in
| the air.
| whatshisface wrote:
| What about places with plenty of water, but where the water's
| all polluted?
| RenThraysk wrote:
| Then you don't need to extract water from the air. Just make
| it potable.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Depending on the type of pollution, making it potable could
| be just as hard as distilling it.
| RenThraysk wrote:
| Distilling still easier and more efficient than
| condensing water out of the air.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Then you just put it into a pot, hook up another pot with
| a tube, then set a fire under the first one. Basic
| distillation isn't rocket science.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Energy costs are the major limiter to desalination and
| the availability of water more broadly. One or two people
| can do that but if an entire civilization does it they'll
| clearcut their forests and make the air unbreatheable.
| Cooking fires are a major source of air pollution in many
| Indian cities.
| outworlder wrote:
| What are those places which have NO humidity?
|
| The Sahara desert has a relative humidity of 25% (on average).
| Humidity tends to be much higher in deserts at night. Atacama
| can go to 0-2% _at noon in direct sunlight_, but as high as 50%
| at night.
|
| The driest location on the planet is probably Antarctica. Yes,
| full of water, in the form of ice, but the air is dry.
| fareesh wrote:
| Does anyone know of a YouTube video of a similar device? Or
| perhaps the same one
| artificial wrote:
| Would this fit the bill? I thought these were super cool for
| offgrid: http://www.skywell.com/
| Ansil849 wrote:
| So what is the practical use of this?
|
| Let's say that I'm not an engineer or a researcher or a coder,
| but would like to set some of these units up to collect water.
| How do I do so? Do I approach someone to build this for me
| (who?)? How much can I expect it to cost?
|
| In other words, how can I actualize this vision:
|
| > So the H2E team asked: "What if you could put the power to
| generate daily drinking water into the hands of individuals, no
| matter where they live, by creating an affordable, easy to use
| device that harvests water from the air and is powered by the
| sun?"
| adrianwaj wrote:
| Are there any sites that help build groups around current and
| upcoming open-source projects, and also encourage people to
| make stuff open-source - perhaps with pledges?
|
| ... a more business-focused GitHub.
|
| ... an OpenSea for inventors.
|
| Imagine if money spent on NFTs would go to cool projects
| instead of avatars!
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| The prototype described is tricky. Basically because they want
| low unit cost, they had to assume mass manufacture techniques
| such as vacuum forming. This means that the cost of small
| builds will be quite high (since there's a lot of jigging and
| molds that have to be 3d printed/CNC'd). Unfortunately, they
| don't have a BOM cost listed anywhere I've been able to find.
|
| But also because this is a prototype, and they wanted to be
| able to tinker and measure, there's lots of design features and
| parts that are quite expensive and not really needed. Assembly
| also appears to be tricky and time consuming with non-trivial
| risk of damaging parts that then need to be repaired.
|
| So ultimately you have a design and plan that's neither
| directly suitable for mass-production or low volume production
| (which is fine! it's a prototype! it's super not done). The
| prototype as described would likely form an acceptable basis
| for further revision.
|
| You could probably go to a mechanical engineering
| design/consulting/prototyping firm with this and ask them to
| make it real with minimal changes (removing extraneous
| measurement devices, maybe swap out some of the grommets). It'd
| probably cost you like 50k at least to get your first one.
| Second one probably will cost like 100 bucks range.
| signalblur wrote:
| Potentially as a water source for data center cooling? Not sure
| if it'd scale to those needs
| Ansil849 wrote:
| My question was more, how does this help individuals without
| access to clean water, not a dystopian 'how can it be co-
| opted by corporations for business ends', but I appreciate
| the varying definitions of "practical" people have.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| > dystopian 'how can it be co-opted by corporations for
| business ends'
|
| Why is it "dystopian" and "co-opting" if a company uses a
| technology like this to operate in a more environmentally
| friendly way?
|
| People love to shit on companies (not specific ones, just
| "big companies" as a concept in general), completely
| ignoring where our standard of living comes from.
| emteycz wrote:
| People need DCs too, not just corporations.
| Ansil849 wrote:
| Yeah sure, but 1) prior to needing DCs, people need clean
| drinking water, and 2) the subset of people who need DCs
| is vastly smaller than those who need clean drinking
| water.
| emteycz wrote:
| Well I'm sure we can look at both problems at the same
| time.
| braingenious wrote:
| Wait, what?
|
| What exactly is a data center by your definition? What
| individuals (that are entirely disconnected from
| corporations) need them? How many individuals have
| personal data centers of such a scale that they would
| need to produce liquid water on-site for their computing
| needs?
|
| I genuinely believe you've described an entirely
| theoretical person that doesn't reside in this universe.
| tomrod wrote:
| I need one to host successful blogs and my data hoarding.
| krisoft wrote:
| > My question was more, how does this help individuals
| without access to clean water
|
| If the principle of it is sound, which I cannot verify,
| then by a manufacturer picking up the idea. Developing it
| into a product and selling it to individuals.
|
| They are basically saying (paraphrasing) "Hey we suck at
| manufacturing things at scale, so we won't continue with
| this idea. But we don't want to let our learnings go to
| waste. Go ahead and learn from our experiments and
| mistakes. Maybe one of you out there can make it work as a
| product."
| 8note wrote:
| Open sourcing a dehumidier isn't very exciting, mind you
| emteycz wrote:
| I think it's very exciting. I'd love to have everything
| in/around my house open source.
| samstave wrote:
| Dont lock your doors!
| dylan604 wrote:
| What a totally disingenuous way to recieve the comment's
| spirit, which takes some serious miscontruing to take it
| to wherever you're trying to take it.
| jcranberry wrote:
| Considering they said allowing others to build on this
| progress I would imagine that they have not achieved their
| stated goal yet:
|
| >The team aimed to build a highly lightweight, portable,
| cheap (<5% of user's income) device that an individual
| could use to produce 5L of drinking water per day.
| cypherpunks01 wrote:
| Can the desiccant work in perpetuity? Or is it more of a "wear
| part" that needs replacement? I don't understand enough of the
| desiccant types mentioned in the Nature paper to know.
| [deleted]
| sitkack wrote:
| > Our assessment--using Google Earth Engine13--introduces a
| hypothetical 1-metre-square device with a SY profle of 0.2 to 2.5
| litres per kilowatthour (0.1 to 1.25 litres per kilowatt-hour for
| a 2-metre-square device) at 30% to 90% RH, respectively.
|
| The upper bound is nice, the lower bound kinda hurts. I can't
| tell if they are tracking the night cycle and harvesting when the
| dewpoint drops. Is this all calculation or is there a blueprint I
| am missing.
| eointierney wrote:
| So imagine if you could convince the open source community of the
| planet to optimise clean water consumption based on a cool
| prototype and then you mass produce hyper-efficient instances
| linked to a google account.
|
| Saving the planet one artificial intelligence at a time.
| colesantiago wrote:
| I really wish it wasn't Google, the spyware company that open
| sourced this. But rather a different company without all the bad
| and toxic disgusting ethics that Google has.
| jwineinger wrote:
| The phrase "don't throw the baby out with the bath water" comes
| to mind. Just because some of the practices of this large
| company are bad, it doesn't mean everything to come from it is.
| Keep the good stuff, ditch the rest.
| colesantiago wrote:
| Again. I prefer a different company to work on this problem.
| Google just makes this act highly suspect and non altruistic.
|
| It is like Facebook and Internet.org, we keep allowing these
| tech companies to continue to build these trojan horses.
| Jabbles wrote:
| So you're saying you wish Google concentrated on evil and
| didn't have any redeeming qualities at all?
| colesantiago wrote:
| No redeeming qualities. This is only a gesture of
| distraction.
|
| All Google has concentrated on is evil.
|
| Hell, this project could be the aftermath of a Google PM
| gutting a team.
| johndfsgdgdfg wrote:
| I whole-heartedly agree. Google is using this projects as a
| cover so that they can keep invading our privacy and keep
| uesrs hostages for money.
| mrfusion wrote:
| Is there a simple expansion of how it works?
| curiousfab wrote:
| The concept has been debunked over and over, e.g. by Thunderf00t.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVsqIjAeeXw
| daenz wrote:
| Isn't the video you linked to a completely different concept?
| How does the debunking in that one apply to this one?
| outworlder wrote:
| It is a very different concept, yes.
|
| Considerations of efficiency and power consumption are
| relevant... but not much else. Generally such devices are
| either too expensive, too maintenance heavy, or utterly
| inefficient.
|
| I'm not qualified to comment on, but I have found it
| interesting that it heats up the air (hotter air = can hold
| more moisture), passes the air through some material that's
| supposed to retain moisture, then cools it down with
| radiators. It seems that it would be more efficient in cold
| weather but would not perform nearly as well in a desert
| (where you need it to perform well as the moisture content is
| low during the day).
|
| So maybe Mr. Thunderfoot will be able to debunk this too. If
| he can refrain from reusing Theranos and Boring Co footage.
| Loughla wrote:
| A problem with his debunking at a fundamental level - when
| calculating how often the air temperature is lower than the
| ground temperature, he uses Canada and Wisconsin. I'm not sure
| those are representative of Africa?
| imglorp wrote:
| I think the key message of all the debunkings is this: "it
| depends".
|
| The device may work great in one condition but certainly not
| always like the vendors might tout.
|
| Given the triple point chart for water, the solar power for
| that day, and your humidity and temperature, you can compute
| the max you'll condense from the atmosphere.
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| Right. So the "major" (in my mind) contribution here is
| exactly the work of "compute the max you'll condense from
| the atmosphere" over all relevant regions. In the linked
| nature article, the published work is modelling to help
| determine regions where atmospheric water generator is
| viable for different assumptions and thresholds.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| I think you need more than just a YouTube video to "debunk" the
| nature paper that they have published and that is linked in
| their github. They seem to acknowledge that while there are
| some limitations it still is a viable source of water for a lot
| of regions.
|
| What is surprising is that thunderfoot didn't lose his habit of
| repeating himself over and over again. I'm counting 10 videos
| "debunking" the same idea of a bottle that extracts water from
| air (which is not what this project really is, it's not a based
| around a bottle)& he's been beating the same dead horses for 6
| years now.
|
| Though to be fair, he's now more into into making misleading
| videos about SpaceX and obsessing over Elon Musk.
|
| Edit: Actually it's just weird at this point,his recent videos
| and their titles are so bizarre. It's either cheering at
| failures or Facebook tier thumbnails "Owning" Elon Musk. Yeah,
| I'll definitely stick with the Nature paper.
| outworlder wrote:
| > What is surprising is that thunderfoot didn't lose his
| habit of repeating himself over and over again
|
| Yeap.
|
| > Though to be fair, he's now more into into making
| misleading videos about SpaceX and obsessing over Elon Musk.
|
| His videos are recursive.
|
| You see, even videos having _nothing to do_ with the subject
| at all, he will still find a way to include Hyperloop,
| Theranos and Boring Co. footage. Plus older videos. Like a
| house of mirrors.
| throw8383833jj wrote:
| i've looked into air to water machines before and one downside
| i've noticed is that the energy use is really really high. one
| device I looked at was like 1 KW per 1.5 gallons or so!
| definately not something to water your lawn. At that energy
| usage, I'd say these are more useful for survival situations
| where you're only producing enough water for people to drink and
| survive.
|
| Other than that, I'm very excited about the propsects of air to
| water machines, I really really hope they become a lot more
| energy efficient.
| ben_w wrote:
| Given this is supposed to make 5 litres per day and is targeted
| at people who do not have access to safe drinking water, 1 kwh
| (I assume you mean kwh not kw) for 5.7 or 6.8 litres (imperial
| and US gallons are different) seems acceptable.
| databasher wrote:
| It turns out they are very similar to binary loadlifters in most
| respects.
| Maursault wrote:
| You're thinking of vaporators. Binary loadlifters are heavy-
| lifting droids, though the binary programming language of those
| droids was quite similar to that of moisture vaporators. Maybe
| that's what you meant.
| [deleted]
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