Hi Aamir,

About 50 million years ago a desert beetle species in the Namib desert found out how to extract water from desert air. Now that beetle was lucky. The Namib is a climatologically quite special desert. It lies along the Southern African West coast. As it happens along this coast there is a huge oceanic upwelling zone which makes that the ocean water along the coast and the Namib desert is pretty cool. This leads to evening conditions with a steady sea breeze carrying moist air into the Namib desert. The only thing the beetle had to learn is to keep the back of its body upright. And so he did. With the back of his body upright on the top of a dune, he can catch the moist air on the back of his rather hairy body. This is enough to cause condensation on that upright back part of his body. Because the beetle is of a very patient kind, it just waits till a droplet is formed, which is big enough for the Earthly gravity field to run down its body straight to its mouth. And so the beetle gets its daily portion of potable water.

It has survived and procreated during the last 50 million years (as far as that is known) in the Namib.

The Namib beetles are less known than the English Beatles, but for sure they know damn well how to get their daily portion of drinking water.

So Aamir, if the Namib beetles can produce drinking water in the Namib desert, why would man have a problem with that?

Cheers,

Frank

PS: Here below you can see the Namib beetle in action.

A senior design project of the engineering program at Calvin College: a device which produces drinkable water from humid air.

http://www.calvin.edu/academic/engineering/2011-12-team5/downloads/Team_5_Design_Report.pdf

The easy way is to cool the air down to below the dew point. The water produced is distilled water, unless contaminated after/during condensation.

There were some projects, where a water was harvested from fog using plastic netting. Fog is, technically speaking, not just moist air, but has already cooled below the dew point so that small droplets of water has formed. There are some links to fog harvesting here: http://www.fogharvesting.com/

The plastic netting water harvesting works without additional energy, it just uses the "normal" cooling down during the day and night cycle.

Hi Aamir,

About 50 million years ago a desert beetle species in the Namib desert found out how to extract water from desert air. Now that beetle was lucky. The Namib is a climatologically quite special desert. It lies along the Southern African West coast. As it happens along this coast there is a huge oceanic upwelling zone which makes that the ocean water along the coast and the Namib desert is pretty cool. This leads to evening conditions with a steady sea breeze carrying moist air into the Namib desert. The only thing the beetle had to learn is to keep the back of its body upright. And so he did. With the back of his body upright on the top of a dune, he can catch the moist air on the back of his rather hairy body. This is enough to cause condensation on that upright back part of his body. Because the beetle is of a very patient kind, it just waits till a droplet is formed, which is big enough for the Earthly gravity field to run down its body straight to its mouth. And so the beetle gets its daily portion of potable water.

It has survived and procreated during the last 50 million years (as far as that is known) in the Namib.

The Namib beetles are less known than the English Beatles, but for sure they know damn well how to get their daily portion of drinking water.

So Aamir, if the Namib beetles can produce drinking water in the Namib desert, why would man have a problem with that?

Cheers,

Frank

PS: Here below you can see the Namib beetle in action.

Dear Frank,

it´s working with less than 1.4 kg brain. Clever beatle.

Less than 1.4 g brain

There was a recent student presentation at the Shell Ideas360 competition in Amsterdam, using sail-like structures: https://www.mcgill.ca/newsroom/channels/news/students-win-international-competition-236678

Hi Aamir,

humidity-to-drinking water conversion is thoroughly studied. It has at least 1000 old history at desert and semi-desert areas. Also you may see some nowadays applications. Just look at key word "Air well".

Jan

@Burc,

imposing report and pictures. Jan is right, this technique is not really new, but the young people must learn to know. There is a lot of information in human brains. But this knowledge must be transfered to the next generations. So your Amsterdam competition is exact what we need.

you might be interested on reading about this case:

http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/water-from-air-collaboration-engineers-marketeers

What started as a Marketing idea to promote the creativity of this university, UTEC, focusing on "giving water to the passing by drivers" ending in something a lot bigger.

Water collected is filtered. Even though it is destilled water, I believe it would be very hard to keep the condensing part of the panel clean in these kind of places.

Here are two other articles in english, there is plenty of information in spanish.

http://infosurhoy.com/en_GB/articles/saii/features/society/2013/05/08/feature-02

http://energymeet.wordpress.com/2013/08/22/utec-potable-water-generator/

@Vasile,

that´s what I´m talking about. No costs, just a plastic foil.