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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]