Atmospheric Water Generator

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Wow, that really is a nifty gadget. Note that it won't work very well in dry climates though. Also, it would be great to combine it with a room air conditioner, basically mounting it in a window so the heat exchanger is outside and it cools the room while dehumidifying it.

I've been wondering for a while whether there's enough humidity just above the ocean, to be able to condense fresh water out of the air by pumping it below the ocean surface for cooling, without having to mess with mechanical chilling.
 
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paulr said:
I've been wondering for a while whether there's enough humidity just above the ocean, to be able to condense fresh water out of the air by pumping it below the ocean surface for cooling, without having to mess with mechanical chilling.

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Drinking water from the Ocean, now that would make someone a millionaire! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif
 
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Darkcobra said:
Drinking water from the Ocean, now that would make someone a millionaire! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif

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In the last century, when I was in the Navy, on my ship we made over 800,000 gallons of fresh water PER DAY from sea water. No BS!
It aint that hard to do. Really!
 
Well why are we all on water restrictions down here? Sydney is right on the coast, and they have tighter restrictions than some inland bits (like Canberra). Sure they have a lot of people there, but why don't they do the Navy thing? Is it too expensive or something?
 
That's a clever idea, using a combination of technologies that have been around a long time. Hook up a demhumidifier to water filters, add an air filter, and you've got water to drink and clean air to boot. A shame that it costs so much.

Paul
 
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paulr said:
Also, it would be great to combine it with a room air conditioner, basically mounting it in a window so the heat exchanger is outside and it cools the room while dehumidifying it.

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Our movable airco has a water catching tray which is about the same idea. It isn't meant for drinking, but it's pure condensed water as well. Same goes with the automatic defrosting refrigerators. Water is caught at the back and then removed to a special compartment
 
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paulr said:...I've been wondering for a while whether there's enough humidity just above the ocean, to be able to condense fresh water out of the air by pumping it below the ocean surface for cooling, without having to mess with mechanical chilling.

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That's a very interesting idea. Of course, it would work best in areas where there's the largest temperature variation with depth. I'm not sure where that would be, though.
 
Bindi, the Navy ship probably uses reverse osmosis desalination. RO desalination is also used in some parts of (e.g.) the middle east, where there's sea water available but not much rainfall. I think the cost of RO desalinization is around $1 USD per metric ton of water. That's very expensive compared to most natural sources of fresh water used for farming.

The other method of large scale desalination is steam distillation, sometimes using a nuclear reactor as a heat source (so much energy is needed that the cost of using fossil fuels would be horrific). Of course, building a reactor for that purpose creates opportunities to use it for other purposes. The Dimona reactor complex which made the materials for Israel's nuclear bomb stockpile was built under the guise of being a desalination plant. Other countries will be trying similar things in the coming years.
 
running the dehumidifier in my basement 24/7 while living in wisconsin I always wondered how hard it would be to properly filter the water coming out /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif But then I looked at all the grunge collecting on the coils and I never got around to experimenting /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon15.gif

I can imagine that if you fail to change the air filters the efficiency of the thing goes down in a real hurry as they clog up and finally the gunk starts getting into the water.

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Other countries will be trying similar things in the coming years.

[/ QUOTE ] I don't think countries doing this now bother hiding it much at all, they just deny it at the UN until they have a viable weapon. Like Iran just did. Everybody heard their latest announcement at the UN which I'll paraphrase to say that "we're a nuclear power now, get used to it"
 

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