eevBLAB #31 - Popular Science FAIL! (Water Seer) - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 22, 2017, 01:09:15 am
content: A magazine like Popular Science should be held to a higher standard than today's "Fake news" marketing re-hashing websites, which is why it's very disappointing to see them print an article on the thoroughly busted Indiegogo Water Seer without any kind of basic fact checking or questioning of it's practicality.P.S. The article author was contacted for comment but did not reply.

author: HAL-42b
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2017, 05:12:33 am
content: The Pipe leading to the underground bulb actually behaves like an air recuperator. That would save considerable amount of energy.Thunderfoot and the other archaeologist character failed to see that. No surprise there. I was not expecting to see Dave Jones making the same mistake.Recuperator is basically a type heat exchanger where the working fluid on both sides is air. It is used a lot in HVAC because it saves a ton of money.So the two pipes in that device act as a rudimentary recuperator. The outgoing air is cooling down the incoming air. If the inner pipe was ribbed or corrugated the efficiency would improve even more.Also let's not forget that no matter how low the efficiency, the system would still have 'some' yield. Keeping that yield and preventing evaporation is an engineering problem I believe can be solved with membranes or capillaries.Overall, this is something new and untested but it hardly deserves the "Debunk Fever" it has been getting.Beware of bandwagons.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 22, 2017, 05:37:52 am
content: Quote from: HAL-42b on February 22, 2017, 05:12:33 amSo run the numbers on it for typical types of soil...

author: Don Hills
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2017, 07:26:29 am
content: Quote from: HAL-42b on February 22, 2017, 05:12:33 amIf you're sure it's a mistake, please run the numbers for us. Take the extreme cases: 100% efficiency in the heat exchanger, so that the air exiting at the top is the same temperature as the air coming in, and 0% efficiency, where there's no heat exchange.

author: hayatepilot
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2017, 07:30:09 am
content: Quote from: HAL-42b on February 22, 2017, 05:12:33 amThat doesn't matter. The energy for condensation is still the same.Dave and Thunderf00t calculated only the energy required for condensation and neglected the energy required to cool the air to that condensation temperature.

author: Barny
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2017, 08:11:21 am
content: The next funny thing is, that even when the heat energy magically disappear, there is a little catch.This this pieces of modern art are supposed to be placed in steppe or dessert.There is next to no water in the air. Because if there would be enough water in the air to get this junk to work, there would be rain.

author: Daniel15
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: February 22, 2017, 08:35:41 am
content: Did you contact Popular Science about it? It might be worth sending them a link to your video and seeing what they say (if anything).

author: firewalker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2017, 08:46:56 am
content: Could it be a sponsored article?Alexander.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 22, 2017, 09:30:20 am
content: Quote from: Daniel15 on February 22, 2017, 08:35:41 amYes, I contacted the author before I did the video via email and twitter and got no response.

author: mswhin63
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2017, 09:48:40 am
content: >Quote

author: jonovid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2017, 09:57:07 am
content: the reason why this is called legitimate science, is because this is the scientific new age POP religion of our time.like Al Gore meets space aliens. its green & its magical! when you mix feminism, socialism with political mumbo jumbo you have pseudoscience.look we can save the world and be like God at the same time, with this or that magical green thing.maybe Popular Science is now Popular pseudoscience of the left.FAKE NEWS?if the goal is free drinking water? their is other much better ways to do this, like the many solar still projects on YouTube.

author: HAL-42b
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2017, 10:22:49 am
content: Ok, let me try and run some numbersVolumetric Heat Capacity for Dry Sandy Soil 0.80 x10^6 J/m3.KWhich means we can condense a liter of water by rising the temperature of a cubic meter of soil by 3 degrees K.To obtain the target 40 liters we need thermal contact to about 40m3 of soil. I won't bother with thermal diffusivity but let's crudely assume that drilling to 10 meters deep would give us what we need.Turns out the animation in the video wasn't to scale. No big deal. I mean that's just a factor of two, not even an order of magnitude...Seriously though, a drilling auger on the back of a tractor could drill to that depth in an hour.In the Kalahari Desert the soil temperature at that depth is 18 degrees year round. Also the moisture during the night time regularly reaches 70% and the temperatures drops considerably.So, operate the rig during night time and shut it down at sunrise to allow the soil to equalize.It might work. There are better approaches but this also might work.

author: HAL-42b
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2017, 10:48:15 am
content: Quote from: mswhin63 on February 22, 2017, 09:48:40 amYes Thunderfoot chose to interpret that pipe as water outlet but he does not know much about practical engineering. I chose to interpret it as the exit leg of a cross-flow type heat exchanger.Obviously we would need a third pipe or a hose or something to take the water out.The exaust pipes of gas boilers also work this way. There are two pipes one inside the other. The inner pipe is for the exaust and the outer pipe is for the intake. The exhaust heats the intake air. For every 15 degrees C exchanged they gain extra 1% efficiency.

author: mswhin63
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2017, 11:50:21 am
content: I just noticed a "possible" flaw in the heat exchanger image. According to a slide post it shows that there requires constant flow of air ineachdirection. The image only show flow in one direction and the air should not be mixed for a heat exchanger to operate.One of the first conditions mention in this lecture is the air/fluid cannot be mixed -https://youtu.be/QMg3vr7KgDA

author: alxpo
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2017, 12:08:00 pm
content: It is definitely possible, but performance is definitely exaggerated. Well done scam (perhaps scam).According to collected information regarding heat pump based heating systems with ground heat exchangers the ground heat exchanger with 1kW capacity is 30m length and 150mm diameter pipe.https://web.archive.org/web/20081101044605/http://oee.nrcan.gc.ca/publications/infosource/pub/home/heating-heat-pump/gsheatpumps.cfmMaybe it is exaggeration only in 1 order of magnitude, but not 77.

author: R005T3r
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2017, 12:22:20 pm
content: I'm starting to think that many graduated people have problems in thermodynamics.

author: HAL-42b
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2017, 01:53:11 pm
content: Quote from: mswhin63 on February 22, 2017, 11:32:45 amI have absolutely nothing to do with them. I live in a different country and I don't have anything to lose or gain by their success or failure.I'm just interested because I was trying to design something like that as a thought experiment, only mine had heat pipes stuck deep underground and an expensive recuperator on the surface. It was a stupid idea really because there was no way to build the recuperator cheaply.So when I saw this thing I immediately saw these two pipes one inside another are an excellent way to build a recuperator. Their videos actually never mention it. I just saw a recuperator where there ought to be one.Will the waterseer actually work in practice? I don't really know. But I'd hate to see people gung-hoing on it just because it is fashionable. The whole thing reminds me of Ignaz Sammelweis who first suggested that doctors should wash their hands before delivering babies and was ridiculed because suggesting doctors were unclean was preposterous and ungentlemanly.This summer I might buy a length of pipe and actually try to build something like this and see if it actually works or not.

author: HAL-42b
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2017, 02:06:06 pm
content: Quote from: mswhin63 on February 22, 2017, 11:50:21 amYou are absolutely right of course. There should never be no mixing inside the heat exchanger. Only in rare occasions you can get away with mixing the two streams without any side effects. For example if you were trying to build a giant dehumidifier or something....https://www.1-act.com/advanced-technologies/heat-exchanger/

author: Cerebus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2017, 02:29:14 pm
content: Quote from: Barny on February 22, 2017, 08:11:21 amDesserts don't work like that. There is enough water vapour in most dessert air to get dew, and day/night temperature swings in desserts can be very wide - 20-30 degrees C is quite common and even wider swings aren't uncommon. Dew points are set byabsolutehumidity, not relative; so a dew point of 15C (100%RH) is only 30%RH at 35C and so on.There are even animals that specialize in collecting water from dew so's they can live in the dessert. For example, the Namibian Web-footed Gecko stands in the open at dawn and licks dew drops off its face and eyes. It lives, unsurprisingly, in the Namib Dessert - that has an average annual rainfall of just 10mm. That is also home to the Namib Dessert Beetle (aka Fogstand Beetle) that has specialized bumps and furrows on its shell to collect dew and funnel it into the beetle's mouth. Summer daytime temperatures in the Namib are in the 40-50C region.There's an old dessert survival technique where you pitch out a tarpaulin overnight, with a small rock in the middle to form a low point, and you place a receptacle (jar, tin, whatever) under the low point to collect dew that drips off.While nature may happily provide a 20 - 30C night/day temperature swing it's another thing to artificially create the same swing in the space of a small wind driven device at an arbitrary time of day.

author: Jacko
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2017, 03:59:08 pm
content: Quote from: EEVblog on February 22, 2017, 01:09:15 amPopSci also runs full page ads forhttp://johnellis.com/which makes a variety of claims about water purification.

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2017, 05:27:07 pm
content: Quote from: Cerebus on February 22, 2017, 02:29:14 pmespecially milk or cream based desserts can be very moist.eating desserts in the desert is a good way to provide mandatory intake of fluids. just be careful no desert ends up in the dessert. nobody likes sand in their food

author: Nystemy
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2017, 06:55:31 pm
content: So I were strolling through the internet and stumbled over this video:And yes, Dave have already talked about it a bit and all, though I haven't seen such a simple and down to earth way of explaining why both the product claims and campaign is putting up a rather large warning sign that something isn't really right.And just as a second point, the gravity light thing he talks about, wouldn't a super capacitor or two and a simple crank shaft be simpler? (Just my opinion/though though...)

author: rrinker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2017, 08:12:52 pm
content: I don't know if this is really anything new. PopSci and Popular Mechanics have long run stories of near-fantasy devices and technologies that were always "right around the corner" but utterly impractical or simply things no one ever had the need for.I dropped my subscription to PopSci because in the past bunch of years it has become far more "Popular" and a lot less "Science". As it was, it was only costing me $5/year - so it wasn't a money thing. I was but a wee player when I first subscribed, and ate it all up alongside my Popular Electronics, but over the years I lapsed and would just pick an issue up here or there at the newsstand, then a few years back they were making $5 offers so I re-upped for a couple of years but lost most interest in the way they present stuff now.

author: jonovid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2017, 08:38:04 pm
content: Quoteyour right, popular science magazine is more like popular science fiction. see

author: MacMeter
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2017, 11:11:57 pm
content: Thunderfoot posted a followup video in response to the written universities Facebook response to his first debunk video. Highly entertaining!https://youtu.be/pen6dBszLgA

author: Don Hills
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 23, 2017, 12:15:14 am
content: Quote from: HAL-42b on February 22, 2017, 10:22:49 amTry again... Check the air temperature in the Kalahari Desert at night.

author: thefatmoop
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 23, 2017, 05:10:10 am
content: A sucker is born every day, and you really can't prevent the general public from buying into this crap. Dave we're not the general public and we know bs when we see it -- we don't need you ranting on and on about it.Dave I love your channel, i love the electronics design videos/how to design circuit tidbits like your explanation of how to build a voltage inverter with a pwm output and a few passives. Whatever happened to your power supply design? How about how to design high power smps that use active components instead of diodes etc.Don't let the scammers control your channel/set such a negative tone through youSeems like half your videos lately have you going off on a rant about batteroo at least sometime through it.

author: CCitizenTO
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 23, 2017, 06:00:13 am
content: Would the ground not just work as a giant heat sink? It's what geothermal heating and cooling solutions rely on the fact that temperatures underground remain relatively constant and at a temperature that most fine relatively comfortable (around room temperature or 20C). In the winter they take warmth out of the ground. In the summer they put warmth into the ground.I figure the amount of heat dissipated into the ground is likely to be underestimated but I think it's spot on that it might work but odds are unless they're doing something really interesting the chances of it hitting it's claimed spec of like what was it 40 litres a day will be slim to none.Better off handing out lifestraws ($20) to people in third world countries they're good for like 1,000 Litres. At least then they could use stagnant water and the like as potential water sources for drinking purposes or you know use the community grade one ($330) which will do 70,000-100,000 litres.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 23, 2017, 06:26:38 am
content: Quote from: CCitizenTO on February 23, 2017, 06:00:13 amYep, but go look up the thermal conductivity of typical soils and clays.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 23, 2017, 06:28:59 am
content: Quote from: thefatmoop on February 23, 2017, 05:10:10 amYou don't speak for anything other then yourself. Please don't use "we".QuoteSorry but you are demonstrably wrong.I've been doing debunking videos since 2009, it's a part of my channel.And I can't stress this strongly enough, Ilikedoing them.

author: rrinker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 23, 2017, 01:32:12 pm
content: Yes, geothermal heating/cooling works on a similar principle but the holes go down a lot more than a couple of meters. Local railroad museum installed geothermal cooling a few years ago - this is a huge open space with lots of skylights so you can see and photograph the exhibits, but all those skylights made it unbearably hot to visit in the summer. Cooling such a huge space with traditional electromechanical air conditioning was far beyond the budget of a publicly funded museum - we're talking enclosed stadium size space here, locomotives and railcars are NOT small. Instead what they did was rip up the entire parking lot and drill a series of wells - there used to be a video online of it from a local news station but it has disappeared - and installed a geothermal system to circulate chilled water. The difference once it was operational was amazing. Not like stepping from a hot summer day into an air conditioned home or office, but it was very comfortable, like being outdoors on a warm summer day instead of a hot one. All basically for the electric power to run some water pumps and fans.But yes, this required serious well drilling rigs, this is not just some person in the desert pulling out the collapsible spade and digging a quick hole. You get far enough down - it indeed works very well.

author: Money4Nothing
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 23, 2017, 07:04:19 pm
content: It's so obvious that this wont work, you don't need to know anything about heat exchangers.The outside wind will be at lower pressure than the air inside the hole in the ground, so the air won't be able to be pumped into the hole from outside by the stupid little wind-powered fan. Also, hot air won't want to be pushed down, it will obviously want to rise.Also, if you did manage to create an air flow circuit with some kind of clever pressure differentials, flowing air won't be in the ground long enough to cool down and condense.There's no way to force hot air down into the hole, keep it there to exchange its heat with the ground, and allow water to condense out.....all without application of external power.Not gonna happen.Hell even if you had a powered fan that could force the hot air down, and the water DID condense out, it wouldn't take long for the water to re-evaporate, so you'd pretty much have to harvest the water within a few hours of it condensing. I guess you could get a few cups of water out early in the morning at best...but 11 liters a day? Good Lord how stupid.

author: jancumps
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 23, 2017, 10:58:02 pm
content: Quote from: EEVblog on February 23, 2017, 06:26:38 amThunderf00t's video covers that part very well.

author: jonovid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 24, 2017, 02:41:26 am
content: final word on this from me, rant-science has lost its innocence. times have changed science and scientists are no longer pure! just as the news media has political agendas. so scientists have political agendas too! when "scientists say" this or that or publish this or that.the question needs to be who's agenda are you following? atheist or christian? red or blue?how old do you believe the earth is? - how old is the earth? is it 4.543 billion years? or is it 6.000 years?pure science will prove that a big lump of earth is a rock! the next question now is how old is it? now we get in to agendas.pure science will prove that the weather is changing over many generations. the next question is how? now we get in to agendas.my point isWater Seerhas a political agenda

author: Scutarius
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 24, 2017, 10:51:11 pm
content: Quote from: EEVblog on February 23, 2017, 06:28:59 amI am probably the first to ask a video about basics in thermodynamics, of course, focused on the electrical techonology.I liked this video, but as a matter of fact I'll like to see more teardowns of bad/buggy/scam products, I have been lately at Home Depot and they proliferate more and more.

author: trophosphere
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 24, 2017, 11:01:37 pm
content: Quote from: CesarEscudero on February 24, 2017, 10:51:11 pmWhenever I hear someone mention anything related to heat/energy and electronics, I immediately think of this

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 25, 2017, 04:32:00 am
content: LOL!

author: Kleinstein
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 25, 2017, 04:34:52 pm
content: They only claim it is giving you 37 L of water under ideal conditions:- even in a desert there is a small chance for a strong thunder storm with lot of rain - so maybe this way they could catch up some rain, though something like 1.5 in of rain is a lot. So this might be ideal condition. They only have arrows for "air" flowing in - so this should be a hint.Right from the start or the video, they begin with "Because the the soil is always colder than the air ...." - already this is bullshit: the soil temperature will be about the average surface and thus average air temperature.So if you want to use the soil as a buffer for cold, maybe learn from the Alaska pipeline: they have clever heat pipes to cool the soil more efficient, to a avoid meting the perma-frost ground due to the hot oil in the pipeline. This way the is minute change it could work on a few days a year, though not as efficient as promised. Still not sure the water would be drinkable - more like average surface water.

author: StillTrying
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 25, 2017, 05:38:39 pm
content: Perhaps it could be used as an insect collector.How tall/deep is it these days?

author: MacMeter
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 25, 2017, 08:46:18 pm
content: Quote from: EEVblog on February 25, 2017, 04:32:00 amAre "Thunderf00t's" waterseer videos marked the same? I'm assuming only the uploader can see that "ad" message, but I don't know how YouTube functions.

author: nidlaX
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 26, 2017, 05:49:22 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on February 25, 2017, 04:32:00 amDamn unicode fail on this forum.That is hilarious though, would love to hear what they say when you ask for a review.

author: StillTrying
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 26, 2017, 04:55:28 pm
content: I'd guess that the advertisers' algorithms don't like the negativeFAIL!word, they'd probably be very happy withSuccessfully Debunked!

author: open loop
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 26, 2017, 06:21:39 pm
content: Saw the Lindybeige video as well as Dave's and my intuition says this is probably not going to work because of one simple fact.They DO NOT HAVE A WORKING PROTOTYPE!What is concerning is that Youtube don't seem to like this video and say it's not advertiser friendly. I know Dave won't care but I think it is disturbing thatYoutubegoogle are not encouraging content creators to make this kind of video. Or am I being a little paranoid.

author: Pilleville
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: February 26, 2017, 10:45:39 pm
content: So, the fan will push air down the same way air is escaping? Or am I missing something ...

author: Brumby
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 27, 2017, 01:20:13 am
content: Quote from: open loop on February 26, 2017, 06:21:39 pmAdvertising = Revenue... join the dots.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 27, 2017, 01:39:41 am
content: Quote from: open loop on February 26, 2017, 06:21:39 pmI don't know the reason for that, but I disputed it and it was re-monetised in a few hours.

author: StillTrying
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 27, 2017, 02:27:35 am
content: Quote from: open loop on February 26, 2017, 06:21:39 pmA prototype could consist of just a container, a length of pipe and a 12V fan. if they haven't done this rather than the hi-tech version there might be a good reason.

author: Brumby
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 25, 2018, 03:30:26 am
content: Sign them up for some maths and economics courses.