A serious question for the Technically inclined ?

The first time I saw this article about a water bill board in Peru I really got interested
www.bbc.co.uk...

Just outside Lima, Peru, a billboard provides drinking water to whoever needs it - mainly, its neighbours.

The panel produces clean water from the humidity in the air, through filters.

Researchers at the University of Engineering and Technology (UTEC) in Lima and advertising agency Mayo Peru DraftFCB joined forces to launch it.

UTEC says it wanted to put "imagination into action" and show that it is possible to solve people's problems through engineering and technology.

Then after a little more looking I realized the billboard uses electricity to run condensers and the moisture drip is collected and filtered for the potable water... Not optimum for what I want to do which is provide small units that produce 30 to 50 gallons of water every 24 hours without a grid hook up..

So without using a wind generator (no wind in many places) that leaves solar panels to run condensers (plenty of direct sun light at the sights I would want to install)... Condensers are what they used but anything that would circulate a freon type substance through coils of metal pipe should work.. So D.C. pump motor, solar cells, gravity filtration for the water collected
and a storage tank..

Any suggestions ? Better ideas? Buy bottle water and forget it?

reply to post by 727Sky


If you are in a warm climate, that doesn't frequently see rain....I would suggest looking at temperature differential collection.

As it cools down at night from a hot day moisture is going to form, it's just coming up with enough surface area to get the amount of liquids you require through condensation.

Just an idea.

Cheers.

reply to post by 727Sky


Not technically inclined particularly but I have some small experience in survival and I can tell you this

Even in extremely dry and arid conditions, with a large enough cover sheet, you can produce a surprising amount of H2O from a simple solar still..

In a more humid climate, the results would amaze

No electric, no moving parts etc

Try this for the purification part. Different models available.

LifeStraw

The other ideas mentioned work well.

Captured water needs to be kept in the dark, as dark as you can get it.

Bubbling air through it is also good and a little O3 never goes amiss.

Others have covered the rest.

P

I wish i could extract beer from the air.

reply to post by Biigs


Few questions:
1 purpose of the water ? drinking or plants ?
2 climate ? or location? temperature, humidity, dew point?
3 can you bury part of your equipment?

Are you familiar with the Alaska oil pipe line? Check out how they use ammonia to keep the ground frozen around the pilings supporting the pipe. No moving parts.

Thinking 30 -40 gallons might require something rather large but a lot depends on where you want to do this and the weather conditions.

If you want to collect water thru refrigeration, look at an Ammonia Hydroxide system. simple design, no moving parts at all, it needs a heat source to work. They're still used today, have you ever wondered how a gas powered refrigerator works? Preety cool!(pun intended).

The reason you don't see these in a lot of homes is the Nh factor; highly poisonous! Also being a passive refrigeration system, it takes 8-12 hrs to run efficiently BUT after you remove the heat source, it takes just as long to basically turn off.

Look at the refrigerators in a RV. Hint-you have to light the pilot

As long as you are circulating the freon you might want to make ice cubes. First it cleans the water. Second it provides drink flare for your mojitos.

reply to post by 727Sky


Give me a few more pieces of information and I can size this for you.

Where is the location .. you dont have to be specific but I need some climatological data to do some sizing ... things like relative humidity and temperatures.

Is 50 gallons per day what you are shooting for? It wont be constant based on location.

SirMike
reply to post by 727Sky

 

Give me a few more pieces of information and I can size this for you.

Where is the location .. you dont have to be specific but I need some climatological data to do some sizing ... things like relative humidity and temperatures.

Is 50 gallons per day what you are shooting for? It wont be constant based on location.

Northern Thailand is the location not to far from Nong Kai or Udon. Looking at some of the passive solar collection methods has gotten me to thinking... You would still end up having to clean the collector and filter the water if it was for drinking..

I have drilled two dry holes at the farm and where we are geographically speaking is rather weird. If you can hit water before 35 to 37 meters the water is very good but if you go deeper you end up with brackish salt water for the whole area is over a salt dome.

In Thailand everyone buys bottle water to drink unless you spend mucho bucks on a filtration system for the public water source that is provided to most homes..

At our village farm the water supply is turned on during the night to supply our water containers which we use at the house for bath, sink, and toilet... Day time there is no public running water where we are.. hahahah I just got Wifi last year at the farm !

I had hoped to come up with something that would provide water for garden irrigation and drinking... during the monsoon time of the year I can fill 50 gallon containers with water run off of the house in very short order... But the storage and moving of the containers is a real pain for what I want to do. Also all the water collected is used in just a few months.. Kinda miss a good garden hose and psi water supply sometimes....

For a couple of years now, I've had this as an idea - but I don't know if technology has caught up well enough, yet:

Take 1 Stirling engine, with the "cold" side underground deep enough to have stable year-round temperatures. Use the mechanical output to generate electricity.
Take 1 heat pump, fed by the electricity generated by the Stirling engine.
configure the "cold" side to be exposed to ambient air such that it will extract moisture
configure the "hot" side to provide a cooking surface.

Optional step: Take 1 future technology that provides a > 30% heat-to-electricity (measure as heat wattage in vs electricity wattage out) efficiency and replace the Stirling engine with the future technology

...let me know how well it works for you?

reply to post by 727Sky


Sorry it took me so long to get back to this. If you want to condense atmospheric water vapor for personal consumption, no biggie. If you want to condense it for irrigation things get big in a hurry. At 100% relative humidity, a small window AC unit, say 10,000 BTU, has enough capacity to remove about 10 lbs an hour from the air. This assumes you aren't removing any sensible heat from the air or condensed water water (which you most certainly will). I am sure you could construct some ductwork to maximize your condensing effect so that you condense on the coil and fashion the discharge ductwork to use the reduction in sensible heat from the ambient air to condense even more water vapor on the outside of the ducting.

With this setup you are talking about only a theoretical maximum of 5 quarts an hour.

Assuming you have an EER (BTU of cooling over work done by compressor motor in watts) on you refrigeration package of 11 (pretty reasonable) you are looking at 775 watts of input for every gallon you condense. Assuming you need 30 gallons a day and assuming the RH is always at 100% you could do it with the above 10,000BTU unit.

Since you stated you don't want to run this from the grid, the only reasonable way you could do it is use solar panels and deep cell batteries to run this at night when it will be most effective. For what that would cost, I'd say just go with bottled water.

reply to post by SirMike


Thank you for the time and the reply. I have not been idle on this end either and unfortunately have come to the same conclusion... Nothing is as easy as I would like it to be! I do run a couple of air conditioners and have thought about hooking their drain pipes to a hydroponic system with fish and everything... If I could ever get off the golf course there is allot I could do .. hahahah

reply to post by 727Sky


Golfing sounds better than home improvement projects!

If you do the AC thing, remember to take advantage of all that cold air coming out of it to condense more water from a heat exchanger. What I did above was a back of the envelope calc .... pouring over psychrometric charts takes time and I tool a few liberties. If you put something specific together (location, demands, budget) PM me and I can draw you something up with some dimensions, materials and geometry.