Finally, a Billboard That Creates Drinkable Water Out of Thin Air
No really, it's a billboard that can generate up to 26 gallons of water a day from nothing but air.
I’ve never cared much for billboards. Not in the city, not out of the city — not anywhere, really. It’s like the saying in that old Five Man Electrical Band song. So when the creative director of an ad agency in Peru sent me a picture of what he claimed was the first billboard that produces potable water from air, my initial reaction was: gotta be a hoax, or at best, a gimmick.
Except it’s neither: The billboard pictured here is real, it’s located in Lima, Peru, and it produces around 100 liters of water a day (about 26 gallons) from nothing more than humidity, a basic filtration system and a little gravitational ingenuity.
Let’s talk about Lima for a moment, the largest city in Peru and the fifth largest in all of the Americas, with some 7.6 million people (closer to 9 million when you factor in the surrounding metro area). Because it sits along the southern Pacific Ocean, the humidity in the city averages 83% (it’s actually closer to 100% in the mornings). But Lima is also part of what’s called a coastal desert: It lies at the northern edge of the Atacama, the driest desert in the world, meaning the city sees perhaps half an inch of precipitation annually (Lima is the second largest desert city in the world after Cairo). Lima thus depends on drainage from the Andes as well as runoff from glacier melt — both sources on the decline because of climate change.
Enter the University of Engineering and Technology of Peru (UTEC), which was looking for something splashy to kick off its application period for 2013 enrollment. It turned to ad agency Mayo DraftFCB, which struck on the idea of a billboard that would convert Lima’s H2O-saturated air into potable water. And then they actually built one.
It’s not entirely self-sufficient, requiring electricity (it’s not clear how much) to power the five devices that comprise the billboard’s inverse osmosis filtration system, each device responsible for generating up to 20 liters. The water is then transported through small ducts to a central holding tank at the billboard’s base, where you’ll find — what else? — a water faucet. According to Mayo DraftFCB, the billboard has already produced 9,450 liters of water (about 2,500 gallons) in just three months, which it says equals the water consumption of “hundreds of families per month.” Just imagine what dozens, hundreds or even thousands of these things, strategically placed in the city itself or outlying villages, might do. And imagine what you could accomplish in any number of troubled spots around the world that need potable water with a solution like this.
Mayo DraftFCB says it dropped the billboard along the Pan-American Highway at kilometer marker 89.5 when summer started (in December, mind you — Lima’s south of the equator) and that it’s designed to inspire young Peruvians to study engineering at UTEC while simultaneously illustrating how advertising can be more than just an eyesore. (Done and done, I’d say.)
“We wanted future students to see how engineers can also solve social needs in daily basis kinds of situations,” said Alejandro Aponte, creative director at Mayo DraftFCB.
The city’s residents could certainly use the help. According to a 2011 The Independent piece ominously titled “The desert city in serious danger of running dry,” about 1.2 million residents of Lima lack running water entirely, depending on unregulated private-company water trucks to deliver the goods — companies that charge up to 30 soles (US $10) per cubic meter of H2O, or as The Independent notes, 20 times what more well-off residents pay for their tapwater.
Turning Air into Water
In a world increasingly affected by climate change, unexpected droughts are a harsh reality for many farmers whose livelihoods depend on regular rainfall. That’s why Edward Linacre, an industrial design graduate student from Swinburne University of Technology in Australia, decided to invent a device that can literally harvest water from thin air.
Airdrop, as it’s called, recently won the prestigious James Dyson Award, which grants Linacre over $14,000 to develop the product. It was selected from among 500 entries from 18 different countries for its simple design and revolutionary approach to irrigation.
The sleek, minimal design of Airdrop is in part inspired by the extraordinary water-gathering abilities of the Namib Desert Beetle, which survives in very arid climates by collecting moisture from the air with its wings. Linacre’s device uses a solar-powered turbine to collect the air and deliver it to an underground system of copper pipes, where it is cooled to the point of condensation. The resulting water is then stored in a sub-surface tank and delivered directly to the roots of crops in measured quantities.
“Whatever it needs, we will finance,” said Maxim Pasik, the executive chairman of Water-Gen, in an interview at the Herzliya offices of Beer Itzhak Energy Ltd, when asked about financing options for the firm’s growth. “Water-Gen’s potential is endless. Water from air is the next source of water for the world.” Beer Itzhak Energy is the unit of Mirilashvili’s business that bought a 70 percent stake in Water-Gen.
Water-Gen’s executive chairman Maxim Pasik with Prof. Alan Dershowitz last month in the Water-Gen booth in the AIPAC village (Courtesy: Water-Gen)
Water covers 70 percent of Earth, but only three percent of the world’s water is fresh, and two-thirds of that is unavailable for use, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature. As a result, “some 1.1 billion people worldwide lack access to water and a total of 2.7 billion find water scarce for at least one month of the year,” the WWF says. At the current consumption rate, by 2025, two-thirds of the world’s population may face water shortages, the WWF estimates. Roughly 1.2 billion people — almost one-fifth of the world’s population — live in areas of water scarcity, according to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
Water from air, not from a stone
After the biblical exodus from Egypt, Moses made water for the people of Israel in the desert by striking a stone. Now Water-Gen is striking water from air.
The technology, developed by Kohavi with the help of engineers, uses a series of filters to purify the air. After the air is sucked in and chilled to extract its humidity, the water that forms is treated and transformed into clean drinking water. The technology uses a plastic heat exchanger rather than an aluminum one, which helps reduce costs; it also includes a proprietary software that operates the devices.
The atmospheric water generators developed by Water-Gen allow the production of 4 liters of drinking water (one gallon) using 1 Kilowatt of energy, Pasik said.
Other atmospheric water generating devices, by comparison, consume three to four times more energy, or effectively three to four times less water per energy unit, he said. This makes Water-Gen cheaper than similar solutions offered by other companies. The price of the water depends on the price of electricity.
Water-Gen’s water is still more expensive than desalinated water, Pasik admitted, but is the best and cheapest alternative for when desalinated water cannot be used because of bad infrastructure. For developed markets, Pasik said, the Water-Gen solution is much cheaper than mineral and purified water in bottles, and avoids the use of plastic bottles which are an environmental hazard.
“If pipes are damaged, you cannot drink the water because of pollution. Underdeveloped countries have a lot of problems with their water infrastructure. In developed countries, like in Michigan, California and Illinois, the pipes are very old,” Pasik said. “In the US the infrastructure definitely will be changed, but it is a matter of time. In the meantime, we can provide the alternative solution for drinking water. People may shower with pipe water, but can drink water from our products.”
The company’s devices come in three sizes: industrial, medium and one for home or office use. The more humid the environment, the more water can be produced, said Pasik.
So, while the smaller home units can supply an average of 15 liters of drinking water a day, in India, because of the high humidity, the same unit can make 30 liters of water. The medium-sized device, producing 450 liters a day, is targeted at hospitals and schools, while the larger units can produce 3,000 liters (both amounts can also be doubled in India). The bigger plants can also be linked to one another and feed into existing water grids, supplying some 25 million people if needed, Pasik said.
People lining up for water in an informal settlement outside of Johannesburg, South Africa (Courtesy)
The company has also developed a battery-operated solution that can make drinking water from air in areas without electricity. Using a reverse osmosis process for filtration and purification, the device has a water purification capacity of 1,200 liters a day, so it can serve villages or areas that need water in emergency or rescue situations.
“Water-Gen has a significant cash repository which may allow for expedited expansion and growth,” said Tel Aviv-based Zirra.com Ltd., in a report on the company, adding that the company’s solution meets a “clear need of an audience which is seeking higher performance alternatives.” Zirra is a research firm that analyzes private companies using artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies.
Even so, Zirra said, distribution of Water-Gen’s units will require “a large scale logistic operation which could weigh heavily on the company’s cost structure.”
A shift in strategy
Water-Gen is currently setting up a pilot project in Miami-Dade County, Florida, Pasik said. In March this year, residents of the county were told to boil their tap water before using it after a minute-long power outage at North Miami Beach’s Norwood Water Treatment Plant may have caused contamination.
Pasik said there is a lot of interest from the US federal government about its products as well. Arab countries are interested too, he said, declining to elaborate further.
When Mirilashvili bought his stake in Water-Gen the company was focused on creating water-purifying units for armies globally. “We changed that strategy. We are gearing our devices for civilians where the need is huge,” Pasik said. “We plan mass production by end 2017.”
The software and the plastic heat exchanger — which are in essence the brain of the product — will be manufactured in Israel, and the company is planning to set up joint ventures with local partners in countries around the world to produce its water making machines.
“Our partners will be federal and state governments, emergency organizations worldwide, together with local partners,” Pasik said. Pricing will differ per model, he said, preferring not to give a price indication for the products.
At the end of March, Water-Gen signed accords in India and Vietnam, two countries that have faced water shortages. The deal in India was with the Asian giant’s second-largest solar company to produce purified water for remote villages in the country. The accord in Vietnam is with the Hanoi government to set up water generators in the Vietnamese capital.
An Indian woman and her daughter carry a bucket of water in the streets of Pushkar Rajasthan (Liron Almog/Flash90)
Water-Gen will also continue to work on products suitable for militaries, and has developed a 12-kilogram portable water purifier that works with a standard army battery to provide potable water from any local, non-saline source, with the capability of coping with biological and chemical contaminants, Pasik said. The device has a water capacity of 58-63 gallons of water per battery.
On the hunt for game changers
Born in Kulashi, Georgia, in 1960, Miralashvili studied at St. Petersburg Medical School in Russia and graduated as a pediatrician in 1983. But he didn’t work in the profession and instead joined the family business, whose interests spanned real estate projects and casinos. After immigrating to Israel in 2009, Miralashvili is now a dual citizen of Israel and Russia and his global business interests span real estate, casinos, high tech, diamond and gold mines, healthcare and media companies.
Device pulls water from dry air, powered only by the sun
That future may be around the corner, with the demonstration this week of a water harvester that uses only ambient sunlight to pull liters of water out of the air each day in conditions as low as 20 percent humidity, a level common in arid areas.
The solar-powered harvester, reported in the journal Science, was constructed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology using a special material - a metal-organic framework, or MOF - produced at the University of California, Berkeley.
"This is a major breakthrough in the long-standing challenge of harvesting water from the air at low humidity," said Omar Yaghi, one of two senior authors of the paper, who holds the James and Neeltje Tretter chair in chemistry at UC Berkeley and is a faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "There is no other way to do that right now, except by using extra energy. Your electric dehumidifier at home 'produces' very expensive water."
The prototype, under conditions of 20-30 percent humidity, was able to pull 2.8 liters (3 quarts) of water from the air over a 12-hour period, using one kilogram (2.2 pounds) of MOF. Rooftop tests at MIT confirmed that the device works in real-world conditions.
"One vision for the future is to have water off-grid, where you have a device at home running on ambient solar for delivering water that satisfies the needs of a household," said Yaghi, who is the founding director of the Berkeley Global Science Institute, a co-director of the Kavli Energy NanoSciences Institute and the California Research Alliance by BASF. "To me, that will be made possible because of this experiment. I call it personalized water."
Yaghi invented metal-organic frameworks more than 20 years ago, combining metals like magnesium or aluminum with organic molecules in a tinker-toy arrangement to create rigid, porous structures ideal for storing gases and liquids. Since then, more than 20,000 different MOFs have been created by researchers worldwide. Some hold chemicals such as hydrogen or methane: the chemical company BASF is testing one of Yaghi's MOFs in natural gas-fueled trucks, since MOF-filled tanks hold three times the methane that can be pumped under pressure into an empty tank.
Collect Clean Water Out Of Thin Air
It turns out that on Earth, pretty much wherever you go, you are surrounded by water. Literally can’t get away from the stuff. Even if there isn’t so much as a puddle in sight, the atmosphere contains a huge amount of moisture. Thanks to modern technology, this atmospheric moisture can be harvested from even the driest parts of the planet.
The idea of huge mechanical moisture harvesters in the desert is one that might be familiar to science fiction fans, because it is a concept that has appeared in some of the most popular entries in that genre, such as Star Wars and Dune. Yet a company called Eole Water has now made this a reality. Installed in some of the most arid deserts of the United Arab Emirates, these huge wind turbines can average up to 16 gallons per hour of fresh water collected and filtered from the atmosphere.
The efforts by Eole Water are quite amazing, and represent an attempt to provide long-term solutions for areas where water is most scant. Technology like Eole Water atmospheric water generating wind turbines are designed to provide supplements to local water supplies for drinking and agricultural efforts.
But if you want to do something similar, you need not look any further than Amazon for your very own at-home atmospheric water generator. It won’t be cheap, but for around two grand you can pick up your very own Aquaboy Atmospheric Water Generator. Capable of producing 2-5 gallons of water everyday straight out of thin air, the Aquaboy could be a worthy investment for anyone who really needs some extra water.
you can do completely by yourself.
A very simple DIY Solar Still built into the ground
The term “Solar Still” can have a few meanings, each of them equally useful and fascinating and all relying on essentially the same principle. For the survivalist, a Solar Still often takes the form of a hole dug into the ground and covered with a sheet of plastic. As explained in this excellent article from Desert USA, this simple technique can be a lifesaving method of collecting water in a survival situation. Water evaporates due to the heat of the sun from the moisture or surrounding liquids, then condenses to be collected. Using this method, water can be collected from the ground or atmosphere if you wait long enough, or dirty water (even urine) can be cleansed with a properly constructed solar still.
On the blog Off the Grid News we find a more advanced and less rugged type of DIY Solar Still. In the article, the author outlines how to make a simple box with a glass lid which harnesses the power of the sun to distill water in your backyard. While certainly slower than traditional stills which use a heat source, this is an ingenious method of off the grid distillation which requires no fuel or energy, just water and sunlight!
While one of the most attractive features of solar stills is their ease of use and the ability to build them yourself, there is an excellent product which has found its way into the kits of many survival experts. Originally developed for military and survivalist usage, the Aquamate Solar Still is a reuseable plastic solar still which provides everything you need to purify drinking water from just about any source in a portable, easy-to-carry package. Because evaporating sea water removes its salt, the Aquamate can even make seawater drinkable. A potential lifesaver, the Aquamate is a thing of engineering beauty. Given adequate sunlight, the Aquamate can produce as much as 2 liters of clean water a day.
Berkeley.
Imagine a future in which every home has an appliance that pulls all the water the household needs out of the air, even in dry or desert climates, using only the power of the sun.
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