Watermill Pulls Water From Air Without Wasting Energy
by Jaymi Heimbuch, Central Coast, California on 09.26.08
The inner guts of Element Four's Watermill
With the West in a water crisis, it's not surprising to see a machine that pulls water from ambient air at West Coast Green. The concept itself is nothing new. However, these kinds of machines tend to require a ton of energy. Of course there are camping/emergency dew-catching versions that require no energy at all, but they also aren’t practical for the average family home.
Element Four has developed the Watermill to address the issues of energy use for creating water, and has implemented a technology that takes the guessing out of just how much water can be made.
The unit uses just 300 watts, a relatively low amount for these machines, the Watermill senses its environment and acts accordingly.
Other machines use massive amounts of energy to run a fan to pull air into the machine and extract what water it can, with no regard for the actual dew point of the air in which it is operating.
The Watermill, on the other hand, checks its environment every three minutes to determine the dew point and keeps itself operating at just a few degrees below that dew point. This way, it maximizes efficiency of the energy it uses to operate by maximizing the amount of water it can pull from the air 24 hours a day 7 days a week.
It can pull an average of 13 quarts of water each day, which is plenty of potable water for an average family of four. The water is essentially distilled, but a filter can be added to restore organic minerals if the user wishes.
A solar powered version of the machine is in the works and will be available in about six months.
More on ambient air water machines:
Waterex: Water Out of Thin Air
Wind Machine Collects Water from Air
Water Outta Thick Air: The Whisson Windmill
Air2Water Dolphin – Water out of Thin Air!
Bike To Work Pants: Now You See Me, Now You Don't
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This concept could be useful for coastal areas with plenty of humidity but not enough fresh water.
How does the energy use per liter compare with a desalination plant?
Anyway this machine would be best run at night when the temperature is lower, to save energy (condensation at night is a normal process anyway).
So coupling it with a solar panel would make less sense in that case.
@editor: "it minimizes the energy it uses" not maximise
Seems like it would be really useful on Tatooine...
300 watts/hr gives you 7.2KWH a day. 13 Quarts is 2.25 gallons. so it takes 3.2KWH for this thing to make one gallon of water.
My shower head uses 2 gal/min of water so this thing would need 96KWh to provide enough water for me to take a 15 min shower. At 12 cents/KWH, this is $11.50; assuming I can still do math.
I hope nobody got the impression that this was a viable way to get water.
This seems like it would also go great in those green gyms. Have people riding on the exercise bikes generating electricity to power the "moisture vaporator" which turns their evaporated sweat into drinking water. Mmmmm....
@ Mitch,
This is not for taking a shower with. My mother-in-law was in Macedonia with the Peace Corps for two years. She had a similar device to make fresh drinking water for consumption/cooking. The tap water is usually fine for showering, laundry, etc. In many countries tap water is not safe for drinking.
@ David,
Thanks for the clarification. I assumed it would be more efficient to simply boil tap water, but I guess not.
More important is where does the power go?
These machines work by providing a cold surface on which the moisture condenses. Making the cold surface cold will also make something else hot.
How about using this to pre-heat water for washing etc then the 7.2kWh is used twice once to produce water, once to heat it.
what is a quart? (in metric, please)
and what are organic minerals?