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.

  • MolochHorridus@lemmy.ml
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    5 hours ago

    Yet again, nobody seems to be giving a thought what this means to organisms that are living in the desert. This water is necessary for life and we’re taking it.

    • 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.

  • HowAbt2day@futurology.today
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    7 hours ago

    That water was in its way to somewhere, though. What is that other area gonna look like now that this device intercepts the water?

    • Steve@startrek.website
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      3 hours ago

      Dooooom

      Someone is going to drink it then sweat it back into the air. I doubt its going to get bottled and shipped somewhere else.

    • Hoimo@ani.social
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      4 hours ago

      Eventually all that dry air will end up above the ocean and absorb more water to balance the system. I don’t think it’s really an issue, we weren’t getting rain clouds from the Sahara anyway.

    • SweatyFireBalls@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      Sounds like that other area needs to pull up on those bootstraps and make a water machine for its needs then.

      This comment is brought to you by the sigma water machine, buy yours today and lock your grindset on hydration!

      (Hopefully obvious but /s)

  • Zwiebel@feddit.org
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    7 hours ago

    Atoco harnesses the power of AI to bridge the gap between scientific discovery and real-world implementation, transforming innovative research into scalable solutions. By integrating machine learning and AI with reticular chemistry, we dramatically reduce the time needed to develop, optimize and scale our novel nano-engineered reticular materials for carbon capture and atmospheric water harvesting.

    Bruh.

    • thatsTheCatch@lemmy.nz
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      7 hours ago

      This is likely not the Generative AI, LLM-slop type of AI you’re thinking of.

      I hate generative AI. But other forms of AI and machine learning have been used for much longer and haven’t facilitated the building of ecologically harmful datacenters.

      For example, AlphaFold, which is an AI program that can predict how proteins fold and is an incredibly useful tool.

      I expect that the use of AI here would be similar: something trained for a specific purpose, not just generic generative AI tech like ChatGPT

      • Iheartcheese@lemmy.world
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        7 hours ago

        AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

        IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

        That’s what it said.

  • F/15/[email protected]@sh.itjust.works
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    8 hours ago

    shipping container size

    That’s far smaller than I expected. I also don’t imagine it will be cheap. If they manage to make it less than $100,000 then I’ll be baffled. Less than $500,000 and I’ll be excited for the possibilities in my lifetime.

  • ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net
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    7 hours ago

    Yaghi’s mechanism can do this without a power source. It uses the wind and air for water input, then the sun to drive condensation and evaporative action.

    Really interesting. This could totally transform many places on Earth.

  • Ace@feddit.uk
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    7 hours ago

    sorry but isn’t that just a good dehumidifier? Is there something new?

      • Wildmimic@anarchist.nexus
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        7 hours ago

        This thing works self-contained and off grid - using materials that have huge surfaces to condense the water. It is mentioned that there are powered versions too, but the principle itself does not need extra power, the Sun drives the condensation.

        • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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          4 hours ago

          That’s still embodied energy, so the question becomes; “How much energy does it take to actually make these materials?”

          In particular, the device is packed with Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs), which are synthetic porous materials engineered at the molecular level to have huge surface areas. A few grams of an MOF can have a surface area equivalent to a football arena, according to the source.

          That sounds pretty energy-intensive to me.

        • Midnight Wolf@lemmy.world
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          4 hours ago

          Sun: no more free power for you click

          Every living thing as eternal darkness consumes us: AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH

  • tal@lemmy.today
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    7 hours ago

    When I looked at condensers in the past, they weren’t incredibly energy-efficient. I suspect that it’s cheaper in the long run to do desalination and build a pipeline to wherever inland you want freshwater, unless you have very limited-in-scale need.

    • gdog05@lemmy.world
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      6 hours ago

      This (seemingly) solves some issues in places like Africa where warlords block or destroy delivery systems to remote villages. Also fixes disaster recovery where pipes are destroyed or water systems are contaminated