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myguitarface

This idea is meant to combine the unintentional actions of two other common household appliances together into one unit that satisfies 3 needs. Frost free refrigerators and air conditioners both produce water as they remove the heat from the gases they use. My fridge spits the water out on the floor (it has no water tray to dump) and my A/C units do the same, just wasting water. Hence, I bring the idea of an open source fridge, a/c and atmospheric water generator. Wells sure are nice, and backups supplies are also great. It makes much sense to me to combine their functions, which reduces the number of things in a household system and makes the most out of the energy used. The output should be somewhat purified drinking water, a cold space, with the ability to expand the spaces cooled (or de-heated).

Since a/c is not always needed, the unit can have dual modes. And for Pete's sake, the waste heat from the multi-cooler/water generator (McWag) should be used to do work. I have thought ducting the heat out for multiple uses elsewhere.

ARGHaynes

What sort of energy efficiency does something like this have?

spike

I SAW ONE!!!

it was called the air drop i think

its for agriculture such as irrigating trees.

basically its a small fan (computer fan) run off a small solar cell such as on top of garden light. This whole system is underground using the earths temperature to cool incoming air. it used a heat exchanger that the air had to go though and then a resivour for the captured water

mjn

Do you have a link for this, Spike?

- Mark

spike

http://www.student.designawards.com.au/application_detail.jsp?status=11&applicationID=9692

this is the one that i was thinkinhg of, there are pictures that wearnt in the original article though

mjn

You might considering adding a wiki page. It's worth adding, IMO.

- Mark

spike

im sure it is mark

ill have a practise and yeah

im also thinking of the production process

Conor

I've thought about an open-source atmospheric water condenser before. My conclusion is that an atmospheric water condenser would indeed be an excellent addition to the GVCS.

For OSE, a key design requirement should be scalability. It'd be good to have a version that condenses a few liters a day just for drinking. It might also be good to have a huge one that could irrigate fields. However, the large version might be unnecessary, as planting trees would serve the same purpose through 'occult precipitation'.

Atmospheric condensers are pretty simple machines. You need three things: some way of chilling liquid, a pump, and a network of thin metal pipes with very high surface area. The first could possibly be an Einstein fridge - http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Refrigeration . The second is just an ordinary pump. The third you might be able to make from an old radiator. You rig these three up so that chilled water cycles around the pipes, and have a tray to catch the dew that condenses on the metal.

Here's an article from 1998 with some good discussion of atmospheric water condensing and abundance - http://sculptors.com/~salsbury/Articles/atmospheric-condensing.html

Allen15

If the problem is that one has access to salt or otherwise non-drinkable water, here is a way to solve that, assuming that one can get ready access to enough biomass to decompose (to power it), and a trencher to bury the pipe deep enough.

http://mb-soft.com/public3/water503.html

The author estimates that it could produce up to 10 gal of water per day just using the biomass heater alone, but when used with an enclosed water tank of non-potable water, the heat produced from a single load of grass clippings could produce about 250 gal of (pure) distilled water per day.

If one doesn't have access to a water source at all, in the right climate with enough temperature difference & humidity, one could still bury a pipe and collect from the air, though the results will be much less & slower.

spike

cheers for the info conner.

the airdrop that i spoke about is primarily used for irrigation, rather than using a large one that would need to be put into a huge hole it uses many units in smaller holes, also the idea of surface area to volume comes to mind but i dont know how it would fit in.

4sc4n10

I've worked in a place with an aluminium roof ; during hot summer nights, the thin roof would get rapidly colder than the surrounding air and condense air moisture. Water would drip from the roof to the ground.

Passive air wells have been built : provided you have a surface colder than surrounding air and the air contains some moisture, it's possible to condense it without external power. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_well_(condenser)

I tried an electric one with a salvaged electric coolbox, the type with the Seebeck-Peltier circuit. I simply tilted the coolbox, left the lid open a little and plugged the power cord ; after an hour I got a few milliliters of water.
Using such a circuit for condensation, a good insulation for the "reactor", a solar panel (or maybe the Seebeck itself) and some electronics to measure temp and % moisture, then decide when it's time to cool the thing down could do the trick.

Metz

if you look on Amazon they have the solid state dehumidifiers that have a low enough current draw to work with a solar panel.

I seen a plug in air water generator from Israel a couple years ago. It was at a restaurant and the owner used it as a demo model to sell the generators also. it was a great sales tool.

from what I understand the greatest concentration of these machines is in Israel and India.

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