Couple wins $1.5min XPrize for invention to make water out of thin air - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: edy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 25, 2018, 05:03:44 pm
content: Why does this kind of invention not seem new to me? Haven't we seen a bunch of stuff on IndieGoGo and KickStarter already unproven to work to any reasonable degree by Dave and others? Then again, I guess these are "industrial dehumidifiers" using conventional techniques and are amply powered to do the job....Here are some links to articles:https://nationalpost.com/news/world/couple-wins-1-5-million-xprize-with-invention-that-can-make-water-out-of-thin-airhttps://www.xprize.org/articles/waxp-grand-prize-winnerI wonder if "out of thin air" was to be taken literal or as an expression... and how thin air would affect moisture content and the ability to condense water out of it (and the capacity it would even have)."competition parameters of extracting a minimum of 2,000 liters of water per day from the atmosphere using 100 percent renewable energy, at a cost of no more than two cents per liter."(2 cents per liter x 2000 liters = 4000 cents = under $40 cost daily)(in my area, off-peak 8.9 cents per kWh, so for 4000 cents you get ~450 kWh)(divide by 24 hours, get 18.75 kW used per hour, or 18,750 Watts running 24 hours a day)...and from here....https://www.explainthatstuff.com/dehumidifier.html"the big machine will extract 50 liters in one day and use 24kWh of energy in the process"Jump that up to 500L and it is 240kWh per day, then up to 1000L is 480kWh... So already over the amount listed by the competition (at the cheapest rate mind you in my area, but not necessarily the cheapest cost available globally and certainly not if solar panels are used).It sounds like you will need about 960kWh per day to extract 2000 L. To do so at 2 cents a liter you will need to spend less than $40 a day to obtain 960kWh. I don't know what size array you will need but that sounds like an awful lot and not consistent supply. How many Tesla Powerwalls do you need?So if you link up enough solar panels to a bunch of batteries to charge them up during the day, and run the dehumidifiers off them at night (when the temperatures are cooler), yes you can extract enough water. But how much energy, how many dehumidifiers, how big a solar array and how many batteries do you need? Or are they using a generator powered by biofuel? Very vague.... I'd like to know what "innovation" has allowed them to pull this off other than just scaling in size.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 25, 2018, 05:25:33 pm
content: Reading the article their system comes down to burning bio-mass and let the resulting water vapour condense.

author: edy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 25, 2018, 05:31:30 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on October 25, 2018, 05:25:33 pmSo we are supposedly in an arid area with little water and probably minimal vegetation as a result (think desert) and the solution is to burn everything you can get your hands on to produce water vapour. How did that biomass end up there? If it grew and you have some dried up grass laying around, did it not once have water to grow with? What about the CO2 emissions from this process? How clean is the water?I'm not sure I understand the advantage here, we need more information about this process...Here is what I am seeing:http://www.skysource.org/#skywaterA dehumidifier hooked up to some tanks.... Am I missing the "magic" here?That grass and hill looks to be fairly green, he is on a hill. Surely they could built a water capture system for when there is rainfall (channeling it into large barrels or tanks and then purifying) or dig into the side of the mountain for an aquifer.*Water output is dependent on environmental factors such as relative humidity and temperatureAdditional Technical informationPower Supply: 220/50-60Hz/Single or 380/50-60Hz/3 PhaseRefrigerant: R 407CWorking Conditions require the followingTemperature Range of 65°F - 105°FRelative Humidity Range of 40% - 99%Somebody please do the math and how we get 2000 L per day and what energy price will have to be to get it for under $40 a day (assuming 2 cents per liter). Notice also the asterisk * and we get back to that age-old problem in that the places that need water most are the driest and the best efficiencies to these machines work in high humidity environments, 40-99% in this case. Here's a dry place in comparison:

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 25, 2018, 07:30:13 pm
content: It seems like this would be useful to space travel and colonization of other green worlds.maybe on american plains and stuff too, this way you don't need to dig and fuck up aquifers to get to water.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 25, 2018, 08:52:13 pm
content: Quote from: edy on October 25, 2018, 05:31:30 pmIt seems you got more info. It seems like the Fontys self-filling water bottle allover againI feel a new rant video from Dave coming up...Spending the energy on a pump seems much more sensible to me. A pump can be hand powered too if you just need some water for drinking and cooking.

author: sibeen
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 25, 2018, 09:17:01 pm
content: https://www.xprize.org/prizes/water-abundanceThe site details where the competition rules were laid out.extracts a minimum of 2,000 liters of water per day from the atmospherehas a combined operating and capital cost of no more than 2 cents per literuses 100% renewable energyAnd on the FAQ page we have:"There are a few technologies that exist in the market that can extract water from atmosphere. However, these technologies are either very slow or very expensive. There is also a serious lack of private investment for innovation in this space. Through the Water Abundance XPRIZE, we are incentivizing teams around the world to come up with a disruptive, scalable solution that transforms fresh water access, catalyses the market and pushes existing technologies."OK, we should all point and laugh as they are using a word like 'incentivizing', but it does appear that the prize was set up for the development of a efficient dehumidifying system so you cannot really complain when a dehumidifying system wins the prize.

author: edy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 25, 2018, 10:27:04 pm
content: Ok, the National Post article that I linked in the first post says this:"They prevailed by developing a system that uses shipping containers, wood chips and other detritus to produce as much as 2,000 litres of water a day at a cost of no more than 2 cents a litre."Then it says...."Certainly in regions where you have a lot of biomass this is going to be a very simple technology to deploy"Now a bit more into the technology:"They settled on creating little rainstorms inside shipping containers by heating up wood chips to produce the temperature and humidity needed to draw water from the air and the wood itself. One of the fascinating things about shipping containers is that more are imported than exported, so there's generally a surplus""And if you don't have wood chips to heat them with, coconut husks, rice, walnut shells, grass clippings or just about any other such waste product will do just fine."Ok... so time to figure out what exactly is happening. It obviously is not just condensation of humidity from the air using a cooling process. It also doesn't seem to be a simple combustion byproduct of taking hydrocarbons and producing water and carbon dioxide... then again, if it is, how does thing win the "green environment" condition? I don't think they are burning the biomass.Either way, it seems a bit crazy to ship a bunch of woodchips and containers to places to make water when you can just ship the water directly. Places that have lots of "biomass" and "detritus" sitting around... yet a shortage of water? They claimed in the article it could be used for disaster relief situations. Not sure this is the best approach either.Does anyone have a clue what they heck they made and why it was worth giving them a $1.5 million Xprize?

author: edy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 25, 2018, 10:36:14 pm
content: Ok I think I have an answer here, from this page:https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mbddw8/artificial-clouds-in-shipping-containers-may-be-the-solution-the-worlds-water-crisisBy the way, this "mock up" is ridiculous and looks like something you'd see on an IndieGogo page:And I quote from the above article:"The winning Wood-to-Energy Deployed Water System (WEDEW) basically creates artificial clouds inside a shipping container-sized box and then condenses them to a drinkable liquid. The system works by pulling in warmer air from outside the box and combining it with cold air inside, producing condensation.To power the system, the team turned to burning wood chips and other biomass, a renewable source of energy that has the added benefit of producing heat. The extra heat and humidity allowed the system to extract even more water from the air.In places where biomass isn’t readily available, the WEDEW can be converted to run on solar power."Ok, so from the first paragraph it sounds like they ARE just condensing warmer air from outside the box, cooling it and collecting condensation. The second paragraph suggests they are getting the energy from burning organic matter, a "renewable" source of energy, and feeding some of the exhaust through the condenser as well (how much soot and other garbage will get into your water who knows), and then finally in the 3rd paragraph it says when biomass isn't available, you go to SOLAR.... And there you have it!Really? Is that the winning solution?Is this a refrigerant-based compressor/condenser/evaporator loop (like a basic air-conditioner or dehumidifier) that is powered by either a biomass-burning system or solar? How would you power a compressor on biomass? Are they using some kind of wood-chip burning engine to power a generator which then produces the electricity needed by the dehumidifer?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_gas_generatorNow I see why it is good for disaster relief. They drop a few of these WEDEW containers ("We Dew") on a hurricane-devastated island, and then people chuck the remnants of their houses and shacks and everything else they can find (uprooted trees, etc) into the machine and trade it for drinkable water. Does a dual job of cleaning up the disaster mess and providing water at the same time, in places that are likely very humid to begin with, but surrounded by mainly salt-water, and where it is likely to rain several times a day anyways.

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2018, 12:11:18 am
content: Anywhere you have water you can put >>100x of that water through RO for the same energy.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2018, 12:40:40 am
content: Don't you need cooling, not heating, to condense water out of moist air?Just saying...Lets just put it this way, Ive seen my share of schemes and schemers and there are more and more of them all the time.The particular economic conditions we're living in these days seem to be attracting them, like flies to poop.Red flags go up for me whenever I see people promising to do things that many others have tried to do before and failed.Not to say that revolutionary breakthroughs dont happen, they do, but they rarely happen all at once, they happen bit by bit.

author: edy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2018, 01:15:24 am
content: Maybe someone can get to the answer but the news that I could gather so far doesn't seem to give much detail... Either because the media is ignorant of the engineering principles or they are regurgitating the press release from Xprize.Is it using a refrigerant based loop for cooling a surface to condense humidity out of air or is there something from the biomass? Are they using biomass purely as an energy source like solar or gaining water from the combustion also by running exhaust from their wood chip burner powered electric generator past their condensers as well?

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2018, 01:35:00 am
content: It sounds like they're burning biomass to generate CO2+H2O and energy and using that energy to power arefrigeration dehumidifierthat condenses the combustion products. Seems doable in theory, but I'd be more concerned about what else gets condensed out of the air too...

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2018, 01:47:02 am
content: Where does the CO2 go?I thought it was a bad idea to release too much in the air?

author: Cyberdragon
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2018, 01:50:59 am
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on October 26, 2018, 01:47:02 amThey probably had to plant a forest to gobble it up.

author: StillTrying
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2018, 02:05:10 am
content: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Randall_Hertzhttps://davidhertzfaia.com

author: edy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2018, 02:17:13 am
content: So basically if you can't get enough water out of the air, get it out of burning sh&t....The problem there becomes with complete combustion your resultant gases are no longer combustable. So you must figure out a way to take the heat directly and convert it to electrical energy (to drive your dehumidifier). Meanwhile you can pass your combustion products through the chiller and pull out water at least.If you are not burning it completely, like in this example:... then you will gasify your wood chips by creating partial combustion products (by limiting oxygen but allowing heat to "aerosolize" the wood) which can actually feed into a compression-cycle engine that will burn the remaining partial products to completion (in an oxygen-rich environment) and power an electrical generator:At least that is my understanding of how to use the biomass as an energy source, and potentially also gain additional water from the combustion products. Either way, if you have DRY WOOD to burn, you aren't pulling water directly out of it... you are chemically converting it to get water, and you would still need an energy source to drive your cooling system... either from the wood itself (via a biomass engine) or solar. I don't see any other way. And yes, you will get a ton of CO2 release but it is "renewable" because the trees will regrow. Heck, "coal" is also technically renewable because in a million years you will have plant matter that has died and packed into the ground form again.Here's an old wood gasifier engine that is sort of a "lost technology" since everyone uses fossil fuels... but back in the day when gas was being rationed people were driving their cars around using this:So if they can drive a small generator or the compressor directly with this thing, they could cycle the refrigerant this way through the system, creating the necessary cooling and also getting water both from the air, and also probably the vast majority of the water coming from the actual biomass combustion itself. So they are not "pulling water out of thin air", they are pulling water out of burning hydrocarbons and spewing out tons of CO2. I wonder how well this system would work if they could not get combustibles and had to rely only on solar and the actual humidity in the air?

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2018, 02:18:28 am
content: Quote from: Cyberdragon on October 26, 2018, 01:50:59 amYou mean a forest of oil palms, so that us western people can gobble up large amounts of Nutella?

author: edy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2018, 02:32:35 am
content: Speaking of oil palms... I think I found a good source for what is going on here from the man himself, David Hertz who won the XPrize:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvvVWZQnhes&feature=youtu.be&t=449Screenshot from that part of video here:If the video doesn't open up to the right spot, jump to 7:30 time mark. David is seen talking about sustainable island power system using coconuts running a biomass power plant. Just add a dehumidifier and bingo!Note that in his bio it says he did work on some buildings having to do with an auto museum which was for 1920's and 1930's cars which possibly could have introduced him to the idea of wood chip boilers and power plants. So by the looks of it, we are getting closer to what this XPrize was awarded for. Innovation? A good idea? A solution to the world's problems? The best way to get people water in areas that need it most? Practical? Environmentally friendly? You be the judge.... maybe it was the best out of the worst ideas, and the prize had to go to someone.

author: edy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2018, 04:28:10 am
content: Thanks for linking that video! I didn't see it before creating this post.... So I'm glad to see I wasn't losing my mind when I saw this story and had the same doubts and suspicions. I'm a bit disheartened to see XPrize joining the ranks of all the other shyster organizations out there who piss away good money at fancy parties to award this kind of stuff. Then again, the US Government also gave a huge grant to the guys who developed solar roadways so I guess I shouldn't be surprised in this day and age.Remember the objective of the competition though... it seems the winning team did achieve it.... Extract 2000 L of drinkable water per day at a cost of 2 cents/Liter using "renewable" energy source. They technically were able to meet that goal using a large enough dehumidifier AND using biomass (which they can claim is renewable but terrible producer of CO2) as their energy source AND if actually a source of water in the combustion products. I don't believe SOLAR alone would do it, or if the biomass was not part of the source of water (that is, if it was only the power plant and the air had to provide all the water).Based on the criteria of that Xprize competition, they found a loophole that may meet the requirements to the letter of the law, but not the spirit of the law. This whole idea of providing biomass to fuel their machine and provide the abundant source of water vapour seems like it is cheating the system, and probably not the original intent of what idea Xprize had in mind. Because poor people in deserts with no supply of water somehow have wood chips, coconuts, grasses and other hydrocarbon-rich detritus sitting around. Technically I could have won the prize by building a truck powered by biomass to drive to a water source, fill it up with water and bring it back to where I need it.

author: donotdespisethesnake
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2018, 04:34:38 am
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on October 26, 2018, 01:47:02 amVery poor trolling attempt. Only morons think trees grow using fossil fuels.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2018, 07:32:19 am
content: Burning biomass which produces CO2 is net carbon neutral, because the plants absorbed that carbon less than one hundred years ago.The problem with carbon emissions is burning million-year-old extracted hydrocarbons, that were built up over the course of many millions of years, in a matter of a century.

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2018, 11:39:50 am
content: Quote from: edy on October 26, 2018, 02:17:13 amNo electricity needed, you can use the heat directly to power a refrigeration cycle:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absorption_refrigerator

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2018, 11:53:07 am
content: Even with the slight increase in dehumidifier efficiency if you also get water from passively cooled down combustion products, I just don't see how it could possibly compete with RO if there is polluted/salt water near by. Same for anywhere you can drill a well, with a shipping container worth of equipment you can drill a 100 feet well in a day, through some rock if necessary.So this would only be useful in a desert or at high elevations ... it's kind of a niche piece of equipment.

author: edy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2018, 12:37:47 pm
content: Quote from: amyk on October 26, 2018, 11:39:50 amThat's neat! I wonder if these guys use this method of cooling.[Added later:]Does Xprize actually publish the winning design? Do we have any technical data? I assume they have to prove their prototype does the job? I see the other teams took the "renewable" to mean solar and wind, they equated it with green, so their solutions would have difficulty meeting liters produced per day and inconsistency of humidity, and have to be massive in scale. Burning hydrocarbons chemically creates way more water and provides the energy. If I had a reverse osmosis machine next to ocean powered by wind/solar it could also work... That would be cheating... Yet these guys cheat by assuming a supply of biomass is readily available to combust also.[Added even later:]Scenario 1: Using either solar/wind or a biomass powerplant but only AIR as water source...- calculate the amount of energy in kWh needed by a standard dehumidifier to produce 2000 L per day from say a reasonable level of humidity in the air- figure out the scale needed (how many solar panels/wind/powerplant) to generate the energy needed for this size systemScenario 2: Using biomass as energy source AND as water source (from combustion byproduct)- calculate the amount of water produced by burning a certain amount of biomass into combustion exhaust byproducts- figure out what level of humidity and temperature those combustion products will be entering the dehumidifier after filtering- figure out how much power is needed to condense the exhaust vapours down into water (to determine how much biomass needs to be burned)In scenario 2, we will get an idea of how much biomass is needed to feed the machine per 24 hours. It will be independent of outside humidity. Assuming the energy captured by burning biomass can power the dehumidifier to the level required to condense 2000 L (given the conditions of humidity/temperature of exhaust it is supplied), we can see if the biomass alone will supply all the needed water vapour. If not, then we will have to burn more biomass to get the necessary water.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2018, 03:22:37 pm
content: Quote from: tom66 on October 26, 2018, 07:32:19 amWhile I was just jokingly pointing out possible inconsistencies that are frequent in a lot of those "green" projects, I'm still not sure I get the line of reasoning of those claiming it to be "carbon neutral".It would be (somewhat, the plain neutral assertion seeming a bit too optimistic IMO) neutral if it were considered in isolation. But it's obviously not. There are still as many sources of non-neutral CO2 emissions as before. So any additional "neutral" CO2 emission is just adding up. If the environment is reabsorbing this, it's also reabsorbing the CO2 from all other sources. I can't see how it could ever be neutral unless it was either completely isolated, or helping reducing other existing emissions at least by as much, which in this case it's clearly not?Waiting to be enlightened

author: edy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2018, 04:29:00 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on October 26, 2018, 03:22:37 pmI know, Skysource/Skywater Alliance will plant 1000 trees somewhere in the world for every one of their devices sold!It seems these were the actual 5 finalists and then one of them dropped out, giving room for the winner to enter the finalist group:https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/22/water-abundance-xprize-finalists-compete-in-gathering-water-from-thin-air/https://newatlas.com/xprize-water-abundance-five-finalists/53903/... thus allowing Skysource/Skywater to actually enter the top 5 and then end up winning the prize.If you notice, all the other finalists were actually using solar or wind and were not releasing any CO2 emissions.And in case you want to throw in some conspiracy theories, dabble in a bit of criticism and also ulterior motives, suspicion of corruption and general tin-foil hatted-ness, you can also read this critique which shows why "Xprize" is not a prize at all and really it is just fleecing the public with many catch-words and media-friendly promotional material yet scientifically and engineeringly speaking is a load of steaming carbon-emitting biomass:https://schatziesearthproject.com/2016/04/26/is-the-xprize-really-a-prize-at-all/(apparently there are huge entry fees being collected by the Xprize foundation who are all backed by major corporations that are looking essentially to outsource R&D to competing groups so they can reduce their own development risk)

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2018, 08:56:30 pm
content: This kind of frazz may be a form of modern propaganda- I am not saying it is, but I see a lot of stuff that seems to me likely to be these days.Tell people they are doing great, stoke their egos, and then rip them off while they are basking in your glow. Like in the 'influencing real cockroaches with pheromone daubed robotic cockroaches' paper, it helps a lot if you 'smell right'.Or so my ad industry friend, a serious influencer from way back, told me.That seems to be a common strategy.Again not saying thats whats happening in this particular situation.I don't know how much time folks here have spent in real deserts. I have a feeling many Australians have. I also have spent a lot of time in them, and the one thing that my coast-acclimated body notices first - what you notice straight out is that its insanely dry. (doh!) When I haven't been there in a while, I forget just how big of a thing that is. It changes everything.Its so dry your entire body feels differently than it does near the coast (which when you return to you can feel it, the air feels thicker, its quite noticeable) Your skin feels quite different, dessicated is a good term for it.To give you an example, of how dry it always is, you can hand wash your clothes, and then flop them down on something outside in the sun, and by the time you are done with your shower, they are totally dry.Its insanely hot too, in many desert locations. So hot you basically cant survive without water and ideally air conditioning (or a system of tiny spray nozzles to sprinkle jets of water on your roof - and you when you are outside, a very low tech but effective old school solution)I am sorry to say but I just don't see it as being at all easy to extract enough water out of desert air to survive without a lot of energy.The coast is a different story. There, there is lots of water in the morning and afternoon fog and in the dew. In the desert, not so much. Just a tiny bit.Digging a really deep well is probably the most energy efficient way to get water.Maybe they don't want to remind people that fracking pollutes the groundwater?

author: IanMacdonald
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2018, 09:45:51 pm
content: Quote from: tom66 on October 26, 2018, 07:32:19 amIf you do the calculations, you find that the amount of warming which can be produced by even a fairly large CO2 increase is not very significant.Really, the climate alarmist campaign of Al Gore is no different in principle from this idea. It sounds plausiblebut the numbers just don't add up.This shows just howtinythe change of infrared retention is, for the difference over the industrial era. Taken from MODTRAN, the official greenhouse gas effect calculator.The problem is that people keep repeating the alarmist guff without ever stopping to think, 'Is this actually right?' After a while it's being repeated by so many people that it's taken for granted that itmustbe right. After all if it were not, surely there wouldn't be so many people repeating it? No?The Internet is a tremendous boon when it comes to finding out things, but it also has the problem that it makes it easy for BS merchants to set up a 'microphone howl effect' by seeding their ideas in numerous places, from whence they will be repeated enough times that the public start to believe them.Probably the best proof that we are being lied to, is that theunadjustedtemperature records for several regions show the 1930's to have been hotter than the present era.Taken from original USHCN data. You can download this dataset and plot it yourself."Let him who hath understanding, reckon the number of the Beast."For, knowing the numbers, one is not so easily deceived by the forces of evil.

author: donotdespisethesnake
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2018, 10:09:17 pm
content: Funny how people who know nothing about climate science suddenly become experts when they are told it might affect their lifestyle...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2018, 10:16:54 pm
content: @IanMcDonald: local temperatures don't tell the entire story. On average the earth's surface temperature is rising. Still it doesn't matter whether burning fossil fuels causes global warming or not. Fossil fuels are finite so it is good to switch to alternative energy sources anyway but this needs to be sold to the general public one way or another.

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2018, 11:23:59 pm
content: It's rising, but it's been rising for a long time, while CO2 emissions have shot through the roof only halfway the last century. Sea level rise was steady long before the 50s, it's still steady (at our tidal gauges any way, satellites disagree ... I can walk to the tidal gauge, guess which one I believe?).US mid west temperatures are not indicative of the world, but the level to which they have been manipulated are indicative of the honesty you can expect from consensus climate science.

author: tpowell1830
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2018, 11:57:00 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on October 26, 2018, 10:16:54 pm[RANT WARNING]The big question is, what does actually tell the entire story? The true test in my thought process of such hype is whether first, it sounds like hype, second, does the story keep changing over time, but the hyped answers given lead to the same place; destruction of the world. You have to admit that, like Carl Sagan says, to make extraordinary claims you must have extraordinary evidence. Climate change is not a new term. It has been around for a very long time and so has actual climate change, and so it goes, climate change is always around. The climate in the dinosaur times had a lot more oxygen, but there is evidence that there was a lot of CO2 as well. CO2 is not a major player in climate change, whereas water vapor is an order of magnitude larger as it applies to cooling or heating of the planet. But the biggest player is the sun. The extraordinary claims that are made about climate change (formally global warming) IMHO has not been proven out in a satisfactory scientific method. The data that has been gathered from 100 years ago is not all that accurate, nor is it global, as you say, it is of small areas that had the ability to measure temperature. The world of instrumentation was very primitive 100 years ago, by today's standard. The study since all of the alarmists started this has been spotty and completely indeterminate.Alternative energy resources are sparse and problematic and if we rely on current alternative energy technology, we will need to give up usage of much of our technology and go back to a more agrarian world where we must vacate cities and live in farming communes or some such thing. Use horses and buggies to get around until that magic alternative fuel technology comes forward. Otherwise there will be much riot and civil destabilization because large cities will not be sustainable. This is the alternative to fossil fuel usage, a complete redistribution of people.Meanwhile, back in reality, the world does not have that magic alternative fuel that will allow us to continue in the way in which we are currently comfortable. Asking the governments to do something is not a good method, because bureaucracies are about the most inefficient/ineffective entities ever devised (did I say ever?). For all of you who think that solar and wind are cheap and environment friendly, think again to the entire process in which these are created (using fossil fuel energy). The concrete used in wind generation in order to anchor these windmills down releases a tremendous amount of CO2 into the air. The chemical processes used in order to create the solar cells for use in solar power systems is very dirty and unfriendly to the environment. Making batteries is unfriendly to the environment (where do they go when no longer usable?), not to mention a very environmentally dirty process.Trees take CO2 and make bigger trees. Do you know where the material comes from that makes up the trunk and branches of trees (hint: it is not from the roots in the ground). One of the answers is to plant many more trees. Perhaps we can get many of the movie/TV stars who are behind much of the push about CO2 and climate change to use some of their millions of dollars to plant trees on their large properties so that the CO2 in the air goes to growing more trees? It would be a start.I don't have answers to all of these questions. If any of you have answers that are not something you found on the internet (such as xPrize or stop using fossil fuels now) that actually comes from your mind using scientific or engineering methods, please start a company and make it work. Or, join a company that has demonstrable good science and engineering methods to do good for the environment. The pay is lousy (unless you dupe and win the xPrize) because there is no market yet, but it will eventually come if your devices are done well. If your product is good and less CO2 producing, yet energy packed, then it will sell. This will lead to better efficiencies, and better products in the natural order of how things are done.[RANT OVER]P.S. I did not mention nuclear energy as it has its' own problems and I don't want to get into that argument.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 27, 2018, 12:34:28 am
content: Speaking of trees, there are huge trees inexplicably growing from out of the floors of lakes in the high Sierra (mountain range in California) deep underwater, and after quite a bit of investigation, of tree rings from them and the like, this leads scientists to believe that the climate in the US westwas much much dryer than it is todayat multiple points in the not too distant past, for periods of a century or more, and also that the climate became wetter abruptly, otherwise the trees would not have survived in an upright state as they have.

author: IanMacdonald
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 27, 2018, 06:46:58 am
content: Quote from: nctnico on October 26, 2018, 10:16:54 pmThis is true, and the issue we are facing is that we are being manipulated into implementing arushedreplacement, one which will not work well, or at all. We don't need or want any proposed replacement to be hard-sold to the public by way of propaganda and exaggerations.We first of all need to know that any proposed replacementwill work.The amount of money spent so far on wind turbines would have funded a fullscale fusion test many times over. Or, a whole program of thorium reactors. The reason that didn't happen is because of vested financial interests in the subsidies for wind energy. Plenty people got rich on these. It's more difficult to get rich by doing genuine innovation than by exaggerating the performance of a product you know you can make, to the point where governments can be duped into backing it.This isn't helped when businesses are allowed to woo the 'Green' sector of society with claims of running on '100% renewable energy' when what this actually means is that they've put up turbines equivalent to their energy usage. They don't run on the energy from the turbines. They might as well claim that all deliveries are by skateboard because they've bought as many skateboards as Transit vans! (But the vans still do the actual deliveries.) The sheer number of such bogus claims being put out, distorts the public's view on such matters.Thankfully, governments are starting to see through this, and to demand that sellers of alternative energy products are held accountable for failure to meet exaggerated claims.The same is true in the nuclear industry, which is why we have so many reactors based on dodgy pressurised water coolant and zirconium fuel cladding. It's a tested arrangement, albeit one known to have serious safety flaws. It's less effort to put out claptrap to the effect that you've overcome the safety flaws (when in fact you haven't) than to develop a better reactor. Paradoxically that is still seen as true even though the safer design was fully tested in the 1960's.Basically we need more people in government who properly understand the energy supply industry, and who have no commercial ties to buddies in the energy sector. The latter has been the big problem in the UK, with both Tim Yeo and Ed Davey having personal investments in the wind sector.

author: ebastler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 27, 2018, 06:53:57 am
content: Quote from: edy on October 25, 2018, 10:36:14 pmI assume that's proncounced like "voodoo"?

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 27, 2018, 11:46:15 am
content: Quote from: IanMacdonald on October 27, 2018, 06:46:58 amYou don't know those can work economically either. I think the chance is very slim they can get costs anywhere near LWRs. My highest hopes are for pure lead cooled fast reactors, running on Uranium of course since thorium is such a silly idea. With the high burn up of fast reactors we aren't running out of Uranium any time soon, so what's the point of making things more difficult than they need to be?QuoteNot really, it simply avoids sticker shock.QuoteMost of the breeder designs are far worse, unless you don't think there's safety flaws in plants which use flammable coolant or which requires pumping the fuel around through massive on site reprocessing plants? I'd take a PWR over a Lithium cooled accident waiting to happen or a pie in the sky LFTR in my backyard any day of the week.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 27, 2018, 11:50:47 am
content: Quote from: ebastler on October 27, 2018, 06:53:57 amBy German speakers speaking English perhaps! :p (Similar to how my stepdad, like many native German speakers, pronounces “vegetables” as “uetschtapls” (German orthography)! :p)

author: ebastler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 27, 2018, 11:54:44 am
content: I vas referring to se latter part of se vord, mainly.

author: IanMacdonald
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 27, 2018, 07:55:30 pm
content: LFTR was thoroughly tested in the 1960's. It works.We know in principle that fusion works. After all, what indirectly powers all those windturbines? Pixie dust?

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 27, 2018, 08:03:20 pm
content: As long as its profitable. That's all that matters now.Building new fission plants is insanityLook up what "Groupthink" means.. The original work was by Irving Janis.An 1859 level solar storm like the one that narrowly missed us in 2013, could cause dozens, perhaps hundreds of meltdowns all around the world at the same time. Because of the solar storm issue, new nuclear power plants should not be built.We should not make the potential problem worse.OTOH Fusion should be researched.As far as the fission plants they have now, they should decommission them and figure out how to make the spent fuel safe without a continuous flow of water.Otherwise they present a real problem if the power grid goes out for an extended period. As could happen in the aftermath of a Carrington/1859 class event.Many aging nuclear plants are near populated areas, some are even near the ocean, in areas vulnerable to tsunamis, and/or earthquakes, and often, even when they are not, there are questions as to their safety.Some like the reactors at Indian Point are huge accidents waiting to happen.They are literally falling apart. I am not kidding.

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 27, 2018, 09:28:02 pm
content: Quote from: IanMacdonald on October 27, 2018, 07:55:30 pmThey had no reprocessing of the fuel ... so half of it works as a small research reactor, which means bugger all.

author: edy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 28, 2018, 04:33:15 pm
content: So now it's making the media rounds and of course spreading more and more false or misleading or incomplete information:https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/25/world/fresh-water-green-machine-trnd/index.htmlIt would be nice if Xprize actually gives better details on specs and design to the competing entries, especially the winning one, for the benefit of transparency. Then again, since it is a privately sponsored corporate backed competition they don't have to do diddly-squat.So I read the brief article above and of course it only talks about pulling water out of the thin air. It mentions using solar (laughable) or biomass as an energy source (but no mention of the use of combustion products as a source of water and CO2 emissions). So someone coming away from reading that article will have very little to know what is happening.I am still at a loss to explain what is novel here and how it could possibly be any more practical than all other dehumidifier systems out there, except for the use of combustion exhaust to act as the main source of water vapour and possibly using the biomass as a power plant or as a direct source of heat for one of those heat-based refrigeration devices (that use ammonium salts and some other processes for converting heat into cooling).Not sure about the efficiency of any of this, but the point seems to be that using biomass generates way more energy and way more water vapour than could be achieved by solar or air humidity alone (at least without massively scaling the system to some ridiculous size and cost). So insofar as this thing being a "water source" it relies on burning material and assumes availability of biomass in an arid region.

author: LaserSteve
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 28, 2018, 09:14:48 pm
content: I work at a major university. All sorts of our researchers started jumping on the water from air scheme about 4-5 months ago.Seems to be the latest fad.. I didn't have the heart to tell one of them that 1.7 Kilowatts of AC to drive a magnetron for 20 minutes to liberate 0.45 gram of water seemed inefficient compared to just buying a dehumidifier.Steve

author: Gregg
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2018, 12:31:05 am
content: What gets to me is that none of the free water from air idealists ever address the problem of how nasty the condensate can be and what needs to be done to make it potable.Data centers around the globe have huge HVAC systems that produce lots of water from the air they cool; but it is slimy at best and biocides need to be used to keep the drains form clogging.Unless the condensate is sterilized in some manner it is definitely not “drinking water”.

author: edy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2018, 12:28:01 pm
content: Run some heavy duty UV lamps 24 hours a day on the system, using up even more energy, and make it out of a metal or coating that is not friendly to growth of microorganisms... but yes, how true, due to the relatively slow water flow and it sitting stagnant most of the time and not very cold, it will tend to grow lots of stuff in it. Not to mention if they plan on using biomass burning exhaust fumes and precipitate that, what's going to be in the water. Either way the water is going to need lots of filtering and some minerals and salts and probably chlorine will have to be added as I can't imagine drinking essentially "distilled" water is good for you long term.