Aqua Sciences Connects With FEMA: No More Bottled Water After The Hurricane?
by John Laumer, Philadelphia on 01. 8.08
This updates Mairi's post from 2006, called "Water Harvesting Now Works in Deserts."
Aqua Sciences is redefining water harvesting technology, according to a recent article in Wired Magazine. The firm, now under government contract to hydrate U.S. soldiers in Iraq, has developed a product which creates water out of thin air "virtually everywhere."
Stateside, it seems Aqua has, since 2006, hooked up with a very different type of FEMA trailer. Per the Aqua website: "The 40 foot container with the reverse osmosis module can provide emergency water for up to 3,000 people per day."
By scattering these units (pictured) around Atlanta GA during next summer's water crisis - during which area water bottlers will be out of feedstock - the National Guard, already stressed from Iraq, can park the water tanker trucks and maybe just keep these running.
We're really hoping they give FEMA a little of that Green Religion and get them out of the bottled water rut.
Aqua Sciences™ atmospheric water extraction machines can be furnished and installed in disaster sites, urban, rural and isolated communities to capture, purify and dispense water of superior quality on demand.Current machines can provide between 350-1,200 gallons of water per day with a target price of approximately $0.25 per gallon dependent upon actual conditions and costs.
Machines may be powered by electricity or a self-contained diesel generator and are environmentally friendly due to lower energy requirements and no harmful or toxic by-products.
What's the magic tech? Well...we can only speculate, not having peeked inside one of these boxes, but one possibility would be a regenerable matrix of an organic (synthetic) molecular sieve compound, as described here. The key to functional efficiency would be to have an extremely thin layer of the synthetic mol-sieve distributed over a very high surface area. Other technologies certainly are plausible. Let's see if any of our readers have further insights?
Update: Via Forbes Magazine article, we learned that "It uses hygroscopic salts to attract water molecules from the air, and then extracts the water from the solution. The salts also act as a natural decontaminant."
Image credit::Aqua Sciences.
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All water-from-air technologies rely on one thing: cold to create condensation. Think of a cold glass of water on a summer day - the cold outside of the glass causes the humidity in the air to condense, because the air is cooled and cold air doesn't hold nearly as much moisture as warm air.
You can make cold one of two ways, either with a compressor like in an air conditioner or refridgerator, or using peltier junction technology which uses a solid-state wafer which gets cold on one side and warm on the other when electricity is applied. The later is how ice-free coolers work, and the water-from-air water coolers you see in some offices.
So those boxes either use peltier junctions or compressors to cool incoming air, and then run the water through various UV and filter stages to purify it. I've had it on my to-do list for a while to make my own water-from air unit, believe it or not. Not too hard to make, as long as the purification stages are left to manual processing.
"Machines may be powered by electricity or a self-contained diesel generator and are environmentally friendly due to lower energy requirements and no harmful or toxic by-products."
environmentally friendlier than WHAT?
I'd think a series of solar panels on top of these would be the best bet. Would ther be enough sq. ft.?
"I'd think a series of solar panels on top of these would be the best bet. Would there be enough sq. ft.?"
The military RO systems use LARGE diesel engines, there just isn't near enough square footage to line the roof of a 40ft shipping container to use solar. It could be done by solar, just not on the roof of one container.
I just have to insert that the science doesn't matter if FEMA isn't there with the water. Just to put some facts straight - FEMA certainly wasn't in NOLA handing out water after Katrina and neither was the Red Cross. There were direct orders not to give food or water to Katrina survivors unless they agreed to and were in the process of evactuation. Red Cross was feeding the Police and the National Guard. However, Salvation Army was here and bring around food, water and ice.
Sorry for the digression from the science, just wanted to point out that the greeness of any kind of water delivery method doesn''t matter if there's no water being delivered.
Of course, I've been researching methods of collecting and purifying our own water in the case of another Katrina.
Making it run off of diesel would only be trading one form of liquid needed to be imported for another
"Of course, I've been researching methods of collecting and purifying our own water in the case of another Katrina."
Sailboats often use 12V DC powered reverse osmosis equipment, they aren't cheap, but they work well and get purer water than out of the tap, and can use salt water as the input, or just questionable tap water. Checkout a marine supply store, online or in person.
"Making it run off of diesel would only be trading one form of liquid needed to be imported for another"
I would bet dollars to donuts that 1,000 gallons of diesel yields considerably more than 1,000 gallons of water. They will need to bring in diesel for other purposes, so simplifies the supply chain (don't underestimate that fact!, the military certainly doesn't)
Ah, just like the ol' moisture farm back on Tatooine...
This technology has been around for a long time
in the drying and climate control industry.
The idea for this has been tossed around for a long time but nobody wanted to waste money on it when the higher powers said it would not work.
Know one company is going to create a monopoly with this item.
I think it is a great tool but it is a little late. but better late than never.
I wonder if any body has done any enviromental studies on how these things might affect the enviroment?
This 'Water from air" machine is using lithium chloride as a liquid desiccant to adsorb water molecules from air. The diluted lithium chloride solution is then passed through a reverse osmosis membrane run by a suitably powered high pressure pump. Water is squeezed out from the liquid desiccant and sent past the active zone of the membrane, while the concentrated liquid desiccant is pumped to the section where it would again adsorb water molecules from the ambient air.
If a choice is given to me, I would run this machine on solar panels and have battery back-up. That should make it a 100% 'green' machine w/o diesel generators.
I have been trying to get in touch with Aqua Sciences .... seriously interested to manufacture such machines in India. It is certainly a novel and a very workable technology and can benefit mankind.