Fontus - Self Filling Waterbottle from Air

[Gusto]

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeyHuWNUO7k[/youtube]

Collecting water from Humid Air. Perhaps in the future, finding drinkable water will be a little easier.

http://www.jamesdysonaward.org/projects/fontus-2/?cookies=true

[Franco]

Atmospheric water generators have been around since the Incas used them :
"The Ancient Inca’s would line the sides of mountains with enormous palm leaves. During the evening the earth’s surface temperature cools, which in turn results in the underneath part of the leaves temperature being lower than the leaves surface area which was open to the warmer air temperature & the sun. This caused condensation of the surface area of the leaves. The condensated water would then run downward from the mountain sides into water catchments (today’s cisterns)."
http://www.aeoncreate.com/client/awu/ww ... ology.html
There are several Australians designs using the same principles, however I have never seen anything as small as the Fontus but I doubt very much that it is efficient enogh to be of practical use.

[Mark F]

An interesting use of a solar powered peltier cooler which may work where it can process a very large volume of hot (30-40 degrees) humid (80-90% rh) air to extract 500ml of water in an hour. Some back of the envelope calculations show that at 100% efficiency at 30 deg and 80% humidity it would need to process almost 24 kg of air (~20 cubic metres). As the temperature drops so does the water carrying capacity of the air, as the rh drops the degree of cooling to reach dew point increases. Looking at my current location - Canberra - it is 25 deg and 40% rh (the rh is quite high today). Instead of the 21 grams of water per kg of air under to above scenario there is only 8 grams of water so 63 kg of air needs to pass through the device. This increased air needs to be cooled not by approximately 4 deg, but by 15 deg to reach dew point. Start to add in allowances for lower efficiency, lack of sunlight to power the device etc I cannot see how it will be of use to the average bushwalker in much of Australia.

I acknowledge that it is designed for bicycle use where a much greater volume of air can be processed compared to walking but even so our often low humidity climate will create challenges.

[Gadgetgeek]

Have they considered any way to filter the water? I for one would not want to drink the condensate of urban air. Also, right now none of the ultra-low surface tension coatings are going to be very food safe, unless they can use just plain teflon, but any coating is going to add to the thermal inefficiency.

Like many kickstarter inventions, its a great concept, not terribly practical, and probably not going to meet the dreams of the creators. For instance, why bother with solar? why not pull power from the bike, either a small generator, or similar system. I can understand not wanting to add load to the rider, but the few watts of power you get from a little solar cell can't be that noticeable in the grand scheme.