Weekly Tech Article #12 Solar Atmospheric Water Harvesting Devices
Good Evening my Fellow Steemians
Tonight I bring you another technology that I see that has the ability to bring abundance for humanity and my understanding of it. Tonight I bring you the technology of solar atmospheric water harvesting. There is one main company on the market that is producing a warrantied unit.
They have created a product called SOURCE. You can jump on their website now https://www.zeromasswater.com/getyours/ and check out how much water you can collect in your area today.
From the FAQ on their website the SOURCE Water harvester was developed in Scotsdale AZ where relative humidity drops to below 5% humidity in the summertime and will still produce water in these conditions.
Wow! How are they grabbing water from such little relative humidity in the air? This is where they really have done some thinking and produced something special. I will attempt to explain what is happening to the best of my ability.
From the description in their technical specs I found here: https://www.zeromasswater.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Technical_1-Pager_2018.pdf. The product draws in ambient moist air onto "advanced hygroscopic materials".
Hygroscopiwhat? yeah its a new term for me....I went to everipedia https://everipedia.org/wiki/Hygroscopy/
I learned that hygroscopic material are those that have an affinity to drawing in and absorbing or adsorbing water from an at normal or room temperature environment. Some examples of these materials are cellulose as in cotton or paper, sugar, honey, and different salts including table salt (sodium choloride).
Sauce
So...…. as I understand the process, the "advanced hygroscopic materials" will soak up the water that is drawn in via a fan, and from there a thermal process helps to desorb the water by solar heating. The water vapor is then condensed/collected in a reservoir, and finally pumped to a dispenser.
Their website does not give me a direct quote but I found a price From an article written 11/29/2017 from https://inhabitat.com/new-rooftop-solar-hydropanels-harvest-drinking-water-and-energy-at-the-same-time/ Right now it looks like this product is quite expensive and the two panel array costs about $4000 and $500 for installation.
The website allows you to put a $120 refundable risk free deposit down for a site survey for installing the SOURCE on your property. If you decide to purchase the deposit goes toward the price of the SOURCE.
Thank you for your time if you gave this article a read!
I believe this device is more available for the early adopters, and organizations that can pool funds to purchase. However...... as this product scales, and the tech is more widely understood, I believe the price will come way down for this product and others like it.
I upvoted your post.
Cheers to you.
@Pinoy
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