WATER FROM AIR

Printer-friendly versionPrinter-friendly version Share this

 

East County News Service

April 28, 2015 (San Diego’s East County) - What if there was a way to extract water from the air—harvesting dew drops to help meet water needs?

Konstantin Avdienko, an 18-year-old student at the University of San Diego, has done just that.  As part of the school’s annual Changemaker Challenge, he invented a “water condenser” using supplies readily available at hardware stores, 10 news reports.

The device uses a solar-powered fan to pull air through a PVC pipe into the ground, where copper wiring cools moisture in the air until it condenses into water, which is then collected in a container beneath the ground.

Avidienko got the idea while looking at condensation on a drinking glass.  He says his simple device collects a third of a gallon of dew in just one day.  He envisions condenser farms to help alleviate drought and assist poor communities in need of water.


Error message

Support community news in the public interest! As nonprofit news, we rely on donations from the public to fund our reporting -- not special interests. Please donate to sustain East County Magazine's local reporting and/or wildfire alerts at https://www.eastcountymedia.org/donate to help us keep people safe and informed across our region.

Comments

Great Idea.

Yes, a third of a gallon doe's not sound like a lot but it could probable be improved if professional engineers take a look at it! Plus you can watch his video that he recoded for the competition, he explains it a little more https://woobox.com/wxf74r/. There are quite a few patents in that field but the idea behind this project its that it's extremely simple and inexpensive.

Water-from-air knowledge base

Congratulations to Konstantin Avdienko for taking the initiative and actually building and testing a functional water-from-air device! Interested readers can find more information about water-from-air technologies at the Atmoswater Research website. For example: list of patents (dating back to the year 1900!) most with links to the full text, list of peer-reviewed articles (with links to articles or abstracts), and list of suppliers of water-from-air systems (with links to their sites). Cheers! Roland Wahlgren, Physical Geographer Atmoswater Research Vancouver, Canada