Spanish engineers extract drinking water from thin air

[MrMobodies]

I found this article but in the I newspaper.

Inews by Mariano Valladolid and Jon Nazca in Seville

"Spanish Engineers have devised a system to extract drinking water from air to supply arid regions where people are in desperate need.

"The goal is to help people," said Enqiue Veiga, the 82-year old engineer who invented the machine during a harsh drought
in southern Spaing in the 1990s. "The goal is to get to places like refugee camps that don't have drinking water."

The devices made by this company. Aquaer, are already by delivering clean, safe water to communities in Namibia and
a Lebanese refugee camp.

"In villages we visited om Nambia. they were astronished, they
didn't understand, asking where the water came from," he said.

The machines use electricity to cool air until it condenses into water,
harnessing the same effect that causes condensation in air conditioning units.

A small machine can produce 50 to 75 litres of water a day.

Article with pictures and in attachments:
https://www.reuters.com/technology/spanish-engineers-extract-drinking-water-thin-air-2021-08-04/

Spanish engineers extract drinking water from thin air
Mariano ValladolidJon Nazca

SEVILLE, Spain, Aug 4 (Reuters) - A Spanish company has devised a system to extract drinking water from thin air to supply arid regions where people are in desperate need.

"The goal is to help people," said Enrique Veiga, the 82-year-old engineer who invented the machine during a harsh drought in southern Spain in the 1990s. "The goal is to get to places like refugee camps that don't have drinking water."

The devices made by his company, Aquaer, are already delivering clean, safe water to communities in Namibia and a Lebanese refugee camp. "In the villages we visited in Namibia, they were astonished, they didn't understand, asking where the water came from," he said. The machines use electricity to cool air until it condenses into water, harnessing the same effect that causes condensation in air-conditioning units.


Spanish Aquaer company engineer and inventor, Enrique Veiga, 82, (L) and his son Juan (C), Aquaer CEO, check a machine which extracts drinking water from thin air before its first start-up, in Carrion de los Cespedes, near Seville, Spain, July 28, 2021. REUTERS/Jon Nazca
Spanish Aquaer company engineer and inventor, Enrique Veiga, 82, checks the first start-up of a machine which he invented to extract drinking water from thin air, in Carrion de los Cespedes, near Seville, Spain July 28, 2021. REUTERS/Jon Nazca
Spanish Aquaer company engineer and inventor, Enrique Veiga (bottom), 82, checks a machine which he invented to extract drinking water from thin air ahead of its first start-up, in Carrion de los Cespedes, near Seville, Spain July 28, 2021. REUTERS/Jon Nazca


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Spanish Aquaer company engineer and inventor, Enrique Veiga, 82, checks the first start-up of a machine which he invented to extract drinking water from thin air, in Carrion de los Cespedes, near Seville, Spain July 28, 2021. REUTERS/Jon Nazca

While other water generators based on similar technology require high ambient humidity and low temperatures to function effectively, Veiga's machines work in temperatures of up to 40 Celsius (104F) and can handle humidity of between 10% and 15%. A small machine can produce 50-75 litres a day, and be easily carried on a trolley, but bigger versions can produce up to 5,000 litres a day. "Our idea is not only to make a device that is effective, but also to make it useful for people who have to walk for miles to fetch water or make wells," Veiga explained. Switzerland-based Vietnamese refugee Nhat Vuong joined the cause after meeting Veiga and visiting a refugee camp near Tripoli in Lebanon in 2017. He founded a non-profit organisation, Water Inception, which brought a 500-litre a day machine to the camp. "It's working beautifully, I'm really happy," said Nhat, who is now raising funds to install solar panels to bring down electricity costs and reduce the environmental impact of the project.
Writing by Emma Pinedo; Editing by Nathan Allen and Giles Elgood

http://aquaer.com/en/press

Invent machine that can generate water even in the wilderness
desierto

It is estimated that worldwide 750 million people without access to drinking water live. Enrique Veiga, a Galician frigorista who lives in Seville, has created a machine that can condense moisture from the air and produce up to 3,000 liters of water per day. This machine can operate even in areas where humidity is low, as in the desert. The company responsible for the manufacture of the machine, has been commissioned to produce 1,500 units for the government of Namibia, a country suffering from water shortages.

The machine achieves extract water from the environment in areas with temperature 30ºC and a relative humidity of 17%. The inventor of the machine indicates that the limit of its creation is to deal with environments with temperature 45 ° C and 8% relative humidity.

Juan Veiga, representative of Aquaer Generators, company in charge of the manufacture of the machine indicates that in the first phase the company will send to Namibia 500 machines.

So this has been around for 30 years I never heard of it and I still can't find much more details about it other than it uses electricity and the effect is similar to a dehumidifier and some pictures.

It just looks like a massive dehumidifier to me.

I was going to put this under dodgy technology but I am not sure (if the facts are real) but please do move it if you think it is dodgy and they turn out to be false.

In Spain with a lot of sun maybe solar panels are involved and pay for the electricity consumption of this thing.

What do you think?

[Gyro]

It just looks like a massive dehumidifier to me.

Me too. Unfortunately its output is going to be heavily dependent on atmospheric humidity level. That's got to be a significant issue in arid areas.

P.S. I've no idea how the efficiency of a heat-pump compares to a desalination plant - I know those are quite power hungry.

[SiliconWizard]

Nothing new: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_water_generator
And, we've seen a few startups the last few years trying to do just that. Dunno if any of them still exists.

[fourfathom]

P.S. I've no idea how the efficiency of a heat-pump compares to a desalination plant - I know those are quite power hungry.

The Spectra marine reverse-osmosis watermaker I have on my sailboat uses 15 Wh to deliver 1 gallon of fresh water (18A @ 12V, 14 GPH).  It uses a "Clark" high-pressure pump which is highly efficient.   I'm pretty sure that a heat-pump dehumidifier won't deliver nearly the water per Watt-hour, but of course for reverse-osmosis you do need a source of water.

[daqq]

Didn't we do this one already? Waterseer anyone?

Doable, but a power and resource hog, with a host of issues.

[Siwastaja]

The most obvious issue is that in humid climates, there is water available anyway. True lack of water comes with long dry seasons in desert-like areas which means RH is easily in some 10% range and extracting significant amounts of water requires processing large amounts of air and spending a lot of energy doing that.

[Zero999]

There are areas with high humidity and low rainfall. Fog deserts are an example. According to Wikipedia there's one in Namibia, which explains why this dehumidifier does well there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fog_desert

Yes, this is nothing new. High temperatures normally aren't too much of an issue, since hot air can hold more moisture.

[dzseki]

The most obvious issue is that in humid climates, there is water available anyway. True lack of water comes with long dry seasons in desert-like areas which means RH is easily in some 10% range and extracting significant amounts of water requires processing large amounts of air and spending a lot of energy doing that.

Well, in a desert at least you can rely on sunshine so pairing this with some solar panels would ease on that.

[Just_another_Dave]

The most obvious issue is that in humid climates, there is water available anyway. True lack of water comes with long dry seasons in desert-like areas which means RH is easily in some 10% range and extracting significant amounts of water requires processing large amounts of air and spending a lot of energy doing that.

In the Mediterranean coast there are regions with high humidity and low water resources, so I suppose that it could be applied in those kind of places. However, energy consumption might be a more critical factor as it needs to be more efficient than desalinization plants while producing enough water to be better than plants based on heating water with solar radiation and condensing it

[Zero999]

The most obvious issue is that in humid climates, there is water available anyway. True lack of water comes with long dry seasons in desert-like areas which means RH is easily in some 10% range and extracting significant amounts of water requires processing large amounts of air and spending a lot of energy doing that.

In the Mediterranean coast there are regions with high humidity and low water resources, so I suppose that it could be applied in those kind of places. However, energy consumption might be a more critical factor as it needs to be more efficient than desalinization plants while producing enough water to be better than plants based on heating water with solar radiation and condensing it

Most Mediterranean climates also have abundant rainfall in winter, which can be stored for use in the dry summer,

[SeanB]

Yes, but in the Namib desert you are going to have much better results simply using a fog collector, which requires absolutely no power to operate, as it relies on the cold of night to condense the fog in the air onto fine mesh cloth spread out to get maximum wind area, and this then wicks down to the bottom where it is collected in open troughs that lead to a collector cistern, giving a reliable source of water. Not too effective away from the coast and the moisture laden air off the ocean, but enough to make it usable.

The condensing from the air does not work though where you have low humidity, like in almost every other desert, where the humidity in the air is very low to begin with, and thus no matter how good your refrigeration circuit is, you have very little to start with in the first place, and thus need o cool massive amounts of air, to get a small amount of water out.

[Miyuki]

Another inverter inventing Perpetuum mobile   

[coppice]

Dehumidifiers don't really produce drinking water. They extract water so slowly its biologically really iffy by the time you have a pot full. It would need sterilising. Is is low in minerals, though. We used to use it for things like our clothes iron, to avoid lime scale build up. Who are these people in places with no water but lots of energy? Is this a secret marketing campaign for solar panel and heat pump makers?

[Sal Ammoniac]

Dehumidifiers don't really produce drinking water. They extract water so slowly its biologically really iffy by the time you have a pot full. It would need sterilising. Is is low in minerals, though. We used to use it for things like our clothes iron, to avoid lime scale build up. Who are these people in places with no water but lots of energy? Is this a secret marketing campaign for solar panel and heat pump makers?

How do you define slowly? The dehumidifier in my laundry room generates about two gallons a water in a few hours in the winter (the only time of year that I need to use it). The water it generates is very pure and doesn't need sterilization to drink (I know because I cultured the water and bacterial counts were lower than the control (tap water)).

I wouldn't consider this method to be a viable source of drinking water because it uses a lot of electricity to generate the water it does.

Perhaps we need vaporators like the one Luke Skywalker used to maintain:

[coppice]

Dehumidifiers don't really produce drinking water. They extract water so slowly its biologically really iffy by the time you have a pot full. It would need sterilising. Is is low in minerals, though. We used to use it for things like our clothes iron, to avoid lime scale build up. Who are these people in places with no water but lots of energy? Is this a secret marketing campaign for solar panel and heat pump makers?

How do you define slowly? The dehumidifier in my laundry room generates about two gallons a water in a few hours in the winter (the only time of year that I need to use it). The water it generates is very pure and doesn't need sterilization to drink (I know because I cultured the water and bacterial counts were lower than the control (tap water)).

We used to take 20 or 30 litres a day out of the air in our old apartment, and that continued every day for most of the year. When we washed clothes the water went up by however much was in the clothes. So, there was quite a lot of water available. However, that's in a place where anything below 90% RH is a dry day. Most places use as much electricity to extract maybe a glass or two a day. Unless you are really strict about cleaning everything out every couple of glassfuls things get biologically nasty quite quickly. The dust build up in the water can be quite rapid, giving excellent sites for biology to get a foothold. If they have a system with an automated cleaning system maybe it would be OK. Dehumidifiers I've used need a lot of work if you care about the quality of the extracted water.

[Bassman59]

Perhaps we need vaporators like the one Luke Skywalker used to maintain

Then you have to make sure you have the droids that speak the vaporators' binary language. Bonus if they can play bocce with your old Italian neighbors.

[Zero999]

Water extracted from the air can taste funny. When I thaw ice from my freezer it tasted weird and someone on the TV show The Dragon's Den, tried to secure investment for a dehumidifier-based water cooler, but failed because the Dragons told them it tasted weird. I think the gasses dissolved from the air such as CO₂ and lack of salts, normally present in tap water, make it taste strange.

[Johnny10]

That link looks a lot like click bait for all the advertisements that pop up as you scroll down article.

So it's a big air conditioner/dehumidifier so what?

[farlander762]

I've seen window unit air conditioners make 10 gallons per day.  Big ships get some of their water from the AC system. 

My mom was kind of a prepper.  She told me to go buy a dehumidifier for emergency water (hurricanes and other short-term events).  I told her a window unit made water and left a cool room for the same electrical spend as a dehumidifier.  My dad wouldn't let her buy a window unit 

[amyk]

Water extracted from the air can taste funny. When I thaw ice from my freezer it tasted weird and someone on the TV show The Dragon's Den, tried to secure investment for a dehumidifier-based water cooler, but failed because the Dragons told them it tasted weird. I think the gasses dissolved from the air such as CO₂ and lack of salts, normally present in tap water, make it taste strange.

Distilled water also tastes strange to those accustomed to "impure" water.

[eti]

Er, DUH - water is EVERYWHERE. I recall the marvellous, late Jack Absolom extracting water from plants in the Australian bush, merely by wrapping transparent plastic sacks around branches and tying the neck, and leaving them for an hour or so. Dear friends, it's BASIC physics, and is called precipitation. Nothing new.