cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/59925291

The system can function in air with 20% humidity or less. But these 1,000 liter a day machines are not small, at around shipping container size.

  • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
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    2 hours ago

    As someone who has thought about it, could you provide the data that you used to come to the conclusion that the amount of water being extracted from the air has any appreciable effect on local life?

    From my thinking…

    Death Valley covers 7800km^2.. Atmospheric moisture is typically contained in the first 10km of air. So there is somewhere around 2.5 quadrillion cubic feet of air containing 114 billion gallons of water.

    The average Atmospheric Water Vapour Residence Time is around 8 days The median is 5 days and Death Valley’s topography is a valley which would trap more moisture, but we’ll use the average instead.

    This represents a moisture turnover rate of about 625,000 Liters/second (or 1.45x10^10 gallons/day).

    So, one of these devices would consume .000185% of the moisture that enters Death Valley every day.