Patent ID: 7775063

Claim:
A method of operating a mechanically and thermodynamically closed system that is at least one magnitude smaller than devices that depend on natural, altitude-dependent air density differences for harvesting latent energy and water from atmospheric air, one of a desired number of cycles of the method comprising the steps of: (a) ingesting a mechanically controlled volume of atmospheric air into a thermally insulated chamber; (b) adiabatically decompressing the controlled volume of air to decrease the temperature and pressure within the chamber to a point where (1) the pressure equals the saturation vapor pressure of water vapor within the chamber, (2) the water vapor commences to change state to nonvaporous water, (3) the adiabatic decompression continues to decrease pressure, temperature, and saturation vapor pressure, producing a continuation of the water vapor phase change to nonvaporous water, and (4) the water vapor change of phase continues to release latent energy into the air within the chamber; (c) extracting from the chamber the nonvaporous water that resulted from the state change of the water vapor to nonvaporous water and retaining the nonvaporous water in a separate, insulated reservoir, at the same pressure as that of the decompressed air within the chamber, to render the process of latent energy release nearly irreversible; (d) adiabatically compressing the previously decompressed air in the chamber so that, as a result of having absorbed the latent energy released by the water vapor, the recompressed air has a much higher temperature, and a greater amount of thermal energy, than had the ingested air before being decompressed because the recompressed air retains the thermal energy that would be required to change the state of the nonvaporous water back into vapor had the nonvaporous water not been extracted from the chamber; and (e) extracting the recompressed air from the chamber and conducting the recompressed air to an external thermal energy harvesting device and harvesting the greater amount of thermal energy from the recompressed air.