Aqua Sciences extracts water from thin air

It's no secret that there's water galore in our atmosphere, but prior attempts to harvest that moisture in any sort of efficient manner have been rather unsuccessful. Well, now a Florida based company, cleverly titled Aqua Sciences, has busted out a 20 foot machine that can harvest 500 gallons of water per day, and is currently showing it off to the US government for the use by military types in Iraq, for disaster relief and for other humanitarian purposes. The machine can operate on a minimum 15 percent humidity, and brings the cost of getting water to Iraq down from $30 per gallon to 30 cents per gallon. They're reluctant to reveal their "secret sauce," which they liken to the KFC recipe, suddenly making us rather hungry, but they do mention that their process uses salt to extract water and act as a natural decontamination method, similar to how nothing grows near the Dead Sea because the salt dehydrates everything. While taking a brief respite from their out-of-control metaphor usage, Aqua Science also mentioned a 40 foot version of their machine which can produce up to 1,200 gallons per day of water, depending on conditions, and can purify an additional 8,000 gallons per day of existing contaminated water using an "integrated reverse osmosis module." We kind of wish they had a nifty metaphor for that one, because the Wiki article on the subject is little help, but we suppose we'll live. No word on when exactly this thing will be put into action, but it doesn't sound like they've entered into any sort of mass production of their machine yet.

[Via Wired News]

[Bill @ Oct 6th 2006 12:01PM]

Ahh! Moisture farms!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tattoine#Moisture_farms

[Deluxe @ Oct 6th 2006 12:06PM]

I'd say this is probably more sophisticated than wrapping a broad-leaf in a plastic bag ;)

[Joe V @ Oct 6th 2006 12:07PM]

Sounds great, but where will we find a droid that understands the binary language of these moisture vaporators?

[Sectumsempra @ Oct 6th 2006 12:13PM]

Let the Star Wars references run wild!!!

[Jason @ Oct 6th 2006 12:16PM]

This is awesome. Sounds revolutionary if true!

[Jawknee @ Oct 6th 2006 12:17PM]

Dang, I was freally hoping to be the first with a Star Wars reference.

[Gautam Desai @ Oct 6th 2006 12:26PM]

These guys, http://www.air2water.net/ had this some time ago and had also develop a home-based system. Don't know whether they were successful in marketing or selling it, I asked the US distributor to order me one, but he flaked out and never called me.

[strider_mt2k @ Oct 6th 2006 12:36PM]

Star Wars reference?

I'm not going there. It's much too rocky.

[Sean @ Oct 6th 2006 12:47PM]

Another one here:

http://www.airwatercorp.com/

Don't know if it's the same as the others.

[akijikan @ Oct 6th 2006 12:48PM]

I lol'd @ strider

[Gustad Mody @ Oct 6th 2006 12:52PM]

i too was hoping to be the first with the starwars refrence, but i forgot how all of us are nerds

[glacia00 @ Oct 6th 2006 12:53PM]

Gautam Desai, you beat me to it. The problem inherent in these schemes is that they're notoriously power consumptive for what you get out of it and work best (obviously) in areas that have a lot of moisture in the air. So somewhere that you really need water, a very dry place, there isn't much water in the air to get...

And reverse osmosis... not brain science or rocket surgery...

[Shaun @ Oct 6th 2006 1:06PM]

lmfao @ joe v

[Wonderboy @ Oct 6th 2006 1:26PM]

I expected all the Star Wars references, but what about Dune? Does anyone read anymore?

[Andir3.0 @ Oct 6th 2006 1:52PM]

I just read what you typed. Does that count?

[jptech @ Oct 6th 2006 2:14PM]

Congrats to this company for creating a great and useful technology.

I'm glad they make water from thin air.

it's better than making bombs.

[Ben @ Oct 6th 2006 2:27PM]

I'm sorry, it's after lunch and I'm slowing down a little...why is there all the star wars references? I re-read the post and I still dont really get it.

[robirt @ Oct 6th 2006 3:01PM]

click the wiki from the first post.... and i dont get "I'm not going there. It's much too rocky." whats that from?

[rockintom99 @ Oct 6th 2006 3:01PM]

Good, I thought I was the only one.

[Grant @ Oct 6th 2006 3:51PM]

there are other products out there to do this but from the other article I read on it this does it in significantly less humid places then the others hence its standoutishness.

[Lee @ Oct 6th 2006 3:55PM]

If memory serves, I believe Pimp My Ride put one of these systems in a Dodge Caravan.

[jbstingray @ Oct 6th 2006 4:38PM]

It is just like Frozone!
$30 a gallon?!?!?! No wonder the US is in debt.

[jlivengo @ Oct 6th 2006 10:17PM]

Let me know when they can extract beer out of thin air.

[Shawn Lee @ Oct 7th 2006 11:10AM]

*cough* http://www.hyflux.com/pdt_aquovate.html *cough*

[Chris Cooling @ Oct 7th 2006 3:15PM]

JoeV beat us all

[tim @ Oct 7th 2006 9:23PM]

did they just invent a DEHUMIDIFIER???????????? water out of thin air????WOW

[Mike @ Oct 8th 2006 2:18PM]

yes, Dune rocks. I'd love to see a solar powered version of one of these things.

And when will they get around to building a binary load lifter? You know, they're quite similar to these "Vaporators" in many ways.

[Mike @ Oct 8th 2006 2:19PM]

Oh, the $30 per gallon for water in Iraq is due mostly to the costs of transporting it across the desert in large, vulnerable convoys.

[Miguel @ Oct 9th 2006 4:31PM]

@robirt

When C-3PO and R2-D2 first land on Tatooine in the escape pod at the beginning of Star Wars, they go separate ways. Artoo follows his programmed orders from Princess Leia and heads off in the direction of Obi-Wan Kenobi, which leads into a series of canyons (where he's captured by Jawas). In response to this, C-3PO says: "I'm not going that way; it's much too rocky."

Just another Star Wars reference because of moisture vaporators.

[Joe Ellsworth @ Nov 2nd 2006 10:57PM]

For those who mention dehumidifiers. It is all a question of energy invested per gallon of water produced. The military has had a variety of Air to water systems available for decades but they have been too heavy and consumed too much fuel to be a viable option. The new generation of technology is aimed specifically at producing more water per gallon of fuel consumed. In addition most dehumidifiers do not produce water safe for human consumption.

[Joe Ellsworth @ Nov 2nd 2006 10:57PM]

Does anybody know what the power cost per gallon produced is? It says on their web site that the tailor carries enough onboard fuel to operate for 7 days but how many gallons of diesel fuel does this require? I am looking for KWh per gallon produced at various humidity�s.

We looked at the DARPA needs and it basically boiled down to being able to produce 5 gallons of water per gallon of JP8 consumed. I would be very interested in how much the Aqua sciences people where able to beat this goal when operating at 15% humidity.

We have two Air to water technologies. One which runs on solar thermal energy and the other which uses night radiant cooling. The solar thermal system can operate at 14% RH but the sq foot of solar collector tends to go up as the humidity goes down. Ours will never be interesting to the military because the renewable based approaches can not reach the same energy density necessary for portable deployment. I hope ours will be attractive for long term use in areas where electricity is expensive. See: http://a2wh.com

[Han @ Mar 19th 2007 2:04PM]

Therese nothing complex about a "integrated reverse osmosis module." If you have a special piece of paper that lets water through but not salt, and you put salt water on one side and pure water on the other, the salt water will leach pure water over. That tendency (to go from the less salty to the more salty side) is called osmosis. So they first suck water from the air using salt, then use reverse osmisis--leaching pure water from salty water--to extract water from the salt. The can also use the same filter to extract water from salty water without leaching from the air, too.

[Elis @ Jan 21st 2008 8:49PM]

This sort of technology is highly required in Nigeria and many drought ridden sub-saharan African countries,but the cost...!?!

[gregory schmidt @ Sep 14th 2008 12:07AM]

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Please do take a look, two models available Now, Today.
Yes, we take CC and can lease...

http://gregorys.myxziex.com/retail/


bless the maker !!