Most of us take the access to clean drinking water for granted. Unfortunately, it’s not the case worldwide. Around twenty percent of the global population lives in areas of water scarcity. The lack of clean water and related diseases cause thousands of deaths every single day. What if you could extract water out of the air? VICI Labs, in collaboration with UC Berkeley and the National Peace Corps Association, is working to bring this concept to life. Meet WaterSeer, the device that could make water scarcity a relic of the past.
How WaterSeer Works
WaterSeer’s design is simple and elegant – a mushroom-like, 6-feet structure with a turbine on top connects to an underground chamber. The turbine spins with the wind and gathers the warm air, which then goes to the condensation chamber. The difference in temperatures between the air above and the chamber below causes the water vapor to gather on the walls and flow to the reservoir. To extract the harvested liquid, all you need is a pump and a hose. Furthermore, WaterSeer works all day and night long, even when there’s no wind. In contrast to the existing water-condensation technologies, it doesn’t require any external energy sources to operate and its only impact on the environment is the hole in the ground. When the conditions are optimal, it can collect up to 37 liters every day!
Development Status
Tested in April, the WaterSeer prototype showed great promise and exceeded the expected efficiency levels. The latest model is currently being crowdfunded via Indiegogo. As of today, they raised 367% of their initial target. Once the funding finishes, the field tests will begin and we will know the final price. Right now you can place a pre-order by making a donation of $134. If all goes well, the commercial WaterSeer will hit the market in 2017.
Potential Impact
WaterSeer’s simplicity, efficiency, and relatively low cost hold a great promise for solving the global water crisis. Several devices could be planted together and connected to collect water in a shared cistern, providing clean drinking water to entire communities. In areas where water is scarce, people have to walk long miles every day to collect their daily water supply. What’s worse, the water they collect if often populated with dangerous bacteria and parasites. WaterSeer could fix this once and for all as the water it extracts from the air is pollution-free. Once implemented, it could greatly reduce the instances of waterborne diseases such as Cholera or Hepatitis A and save millions of lives every year.
You can see how the device works in the video below:
I am a mechanical engineer and have made a thermal conduction model of the Waterseer system. It will not work since the ground conduction is so poor. The soil will not move the heat out of the water vapor to get it to condense. I have talked to Don at VICI labs and sent them my model. They still do not grasp that the thing will not work.
The last time I wrote them they were starting to consider an active system using electricity and Peltier devices. That will still be unpracticable too. It will be a spectacular failure when they go to test whatever they dream up for a design. At elevated heights the dew point is even lower so it makes the temperature problem even larger. VICI labs fails to realize the temperature difference is only a seasonal lag. At 2 meter if there were no seasons there would be no temperature difference between the surface temp and in the ground.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31xCA-ZEkOs&t=289s