Our instrument for terraforming a third of the earth's surface must be the stand alone atmospheric water collector. It is appropriate to discuss the outstanding technical issues that will need to be progressively resolved.
The design concept is simple and minimal. A solar panel will collect sunlight and convert this to electrical current. This current is then stored in a storage battery. At night, after the temperature has dropped, this stored energy is used to operate a reverse refrigeration cycle drawing moisture from the atmosphere. The produced water is fed directly into the root ball of the tree.
We have four components: 1) the solar panel, 2) the battery, 3) the reverse refrigeration water collector, 4) The controls. As is obvious, items 1, 2, and 4 are readily available in some form today and can already be optimized for this particular application.
We even know that the most costly component, the solar cell is likely to drop in cost by an order of magnitude which is critical to the global adoption of this technology. And the battery technology may be easily optimized by simply taking advantage of the fact that this battery does not have to be lightweight.
That leaves us with the task of producing a simple device that captures prevailing air flow, perhaps inducing some acceleration to drop the temperature a little more, and flowing it over a cold surface to draw the moisture out of the atmosphere.
Here there is ample room for design imagination and I throw it open. We do not want too many moving parts, but I suspect a fan will be valuable to control air flow rate. The only design parameter at this point is the need to produce 100 liters of water inside of six hours.
The design concept is simple and minimal. A solar panel will collect sunlight and convert this to electrical current. This current is then stored in a storage battery. At night, after the temperature has dropped, this stored energy is used to operate a reverse refrigeration cycle drawing moisture from the atmosphere. The produced water is fed directly into the root ball of the tree.
We have four components: 1) the solar panel, 2) the battery, 3) the reverse refrigeration water collector, 4) The controls. As is obvious, items 1, 2, and 4 are readily available in some form today and can already be optimized for this particular application.
We even know that the most costly component, the solar cell is likely to drop in cost by an order of magnitude which is critical to the global adoption of this technology. And the battery technology may be easily optimized by simply taking advantage of the fact that this battery does not have to be lightweight.
That leaves us with the task of producing a simple device that captures prevailing air flow, perhaps inducing some acceleration to drop the temperature a little more, and flowing it over a cold surface to draw the moisture out of the atmosphere.
Here there is ample room for design imagination and I throw it open. We do not want too many moving parts, but I suspect a fan will be valuable to control air flow rate. The only design parameter at this point is the need to produce 100 liters of water inside of six hours.
Has anyone tried it? I thought of the same idea many years ago. I am told there isn't much water in desert atmospheres, but I think there might be enough. Why use a battery? Why not run the refrigerator when the sun shines and the warm air is laden with water? If you wait till the air cools at night the moisture will fall as dew and be unavailable, won't it? I have invented but not patented a simple sun powered device that could run a refrigeration pump. It is a high expansion metal bar, painted black or dark grey, that expands and does work when uncovered, then at the end of the expansion stroke when the cover goes over to keep the sun off it does more work as it cools and contracts. The longer it is the better it should work. Considerable gearing would be needed to run a high speed compressor, but maybe a large bore, direct, double acting pump would work. We need to test these sorts of ideas, but first we need to organise. Email me for my plans: Bob Howes, robertcircle1@yahoo.co.uk
ReplyDeleteNo one has actually put the package together as described. However there has been a lot of effort on reverse refrigeration using household current. A machine can produce ample drinking water(water polisher needed)for a household even in the desert because we end up recapturing the water we respire. Cute, eh?
ReplyDeleteRead my original post on deserts back february.
Humidity in the deserts is usually over 30% and in the sahel over 60%
The problem is temperature.
Your device needs to use hydraulics for energy conversion and the results may be interesting.
The battery allows us to pick the sweet spot for water collection.