That having been said, this is basically an air conditioner (or
dehumidifier) with water collection tank attached... Duh! Still a neat
idea. I wonder how much H2O I can collect from my dehumidifier? Hmm...
interesting experiment to be sure.
The machine creating water out of thin air
By Grace Wong
For CNN
LONDON, England (CNN) -- As Zimbabwe battles a cholera epidemic that has
already killed hundreds, one company thinks it may have found a
potential solution to the world water crisis.
Solution for the world water crisis? The WaterMill creates clean
drinking water from air.
A shortage of clean drinking water has unleashed a cholera epidemic in
Zimbabwe.
Element Four, a small Canadian firm, has applied its water technology to
create the WaterMill, a novel electricity-powered machine that draws
moisture from the air and purifies it into clean drinkable water.
The compact WaterMill, which goes on sale in the spring, is designed for
household use.
More crucially for countries such as Zimbabwe and the Democratic
Republic of Congo, Element Four is also working on another device, the
WaterWall, which could potentially supply an entire village in the
developing world.
The team at Element Four shares an ambitious goal: to quench the world's
growing thirst for water. Now the 10-person company is taking on a
challenge that global multinationals have struggled to meet.
Rick Howard, the CEO of the company, says it was at a U.N. conference on
water in New York last summer that he realized just how revolutionary
Element Four's technology might be.
"There we were on the same stage as GE, Dow Chemical and Siemens, and it
was a complete shock to us when we heard the solutions they were
offering. We realized we had something that could effect change," Howard
tells CNN.
The WaterMill draws in air through a filter and then cools it into water
droplets. This water then passes through a special filter and is exposed
to ultraviolet light, which rids it of bacteria.
The product Element Four is designing for the developing world is called
the WaterWall and is constructed by taking several of the water-making
cells of the consumer appliance and hooking them up in series on a wall.
The U.N., which has declared 2005-2015 the International Decade for
Water, expects 1.8 billion people to live in regions with absolute water
scarcity by 2025.
It's no wonder then that Element Four is being closely watched by the
tech world. The WaterMill is being displayed at the Wired Store in New
York, a temporary store the magazine opens every holiday season that
showcases the future of technology.
About one in five people in the world lack access to safe drinking
water, and shortages pose serious health problems for much of the
developing world.
Lack of clean water, coupled with poor sanitation practices, can lead to
outbreaks of water-borne diseases, such as cholera and dysentery, which
in turn, can cause life-threatening forms of diarrhea. More than 500
people have died in Zimbabwe.
Diarrheal disease is the third leading cause of death from infectious
diseases, and the majority of those deaths are among children under the
age of 5, according to the WHO and UNICEF. Most of those deaths could be
prevented if improvements to sanitation and drinking water were made.
But can an invention like the WaterWall really help ease the world's
water shortage and help prevent health disasters like the outbreak in
Zimbabwe from occurring in the future?
"There are some brilliant inventions out there, but they are expensive
and difficult to get hold of," says Paul Jawor, an emergency water and
sanitation consultant with international aid organization Doctors
Without Borders.
The WaterMill retails for about $1,300, but Howard estimates that a
pared down version -- without the bells and whistle -- for use in places
like Africa would cost about $300.
The biggest challenge of a product like the WaterWall, Howard says, is
the power consumed by the water-making cells. To counter that, the
product is designed to turn on in stages so it doesn't overload fragile
power grids.
In comparison to solutions like desalination, which can cost billions of
dollars to develop, that's cheap. "For about $300 we can start saving
lives. Ours is a very scalable product," Howard says.
But there are skeptics. Frank Lawson, an engineering adviser at
international charity WaterAid, said the solution Element Four is
devising wouldn't be appropriate for the charity's projects.
For one, the technology doesn't work in very dry climates. The machine
only functions at or above about 35 percent relative humidity levels.
Furthermore, it requires an energy source. "Our technologies have to be
within the capacity of the benefiting community -- both technically and
financially," Lawson says.
WaterAid uses a number of low-cost and sustainable solutions, such as
rainwater harvesting and hand-dug wells, to help communities in more
than 17 countries access water.
But those solutions depend upon the availability of water in the area,
and fresh water supplies worldwide are feeling the squeeze from
population growth, pollution and climate change.
Howard admits the company needs to focus on growing its business first,
so it may be some time before the Element Four's products make their way
to the developing world.
"We quickly came to realize that if we didn't first build a business to
perfect the product and application, then we weren't going to be able to
get to a point where we could have a significant humanitarian impact,"
he says.
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But Howard and partner Jonathan Ritchey are in various stages of
discussions with several humanitarian groups in the field. Howard
declined to name the organizations.
It's early, but the company's core principle is "to do good as we do
well," he says. "That's part of truly what drives us -- knowing that at
some point we will be able to do some significant good."
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