Post by rmarks1 on Nov 28, 2017 23:53:21 GMT -5
This device even works in the desert!
Bob
It’s often said you can’t make something out of nothing. Cody Friesen may have come as close to succeeding as anyone.
To show me his technological sleight of hand, Friesen invites me to a hillside house in Berkeley, California on a sunny afternoon. There, in a shaded courtyard, we each sample a cup of water that flows from a drinking fountain. The water is cool and delicious – and it was made out of thin air. Literally.
Nanomaterials – and physics, of course – played a role too. The drinking fountain is fed by a flexible pipe that leads to the house’s roof. There sit two Friesen’s devices, called Source Hydropanels. Each looks like solar panel mounted atop a metal box. The system extracts moisture out of the air at a rate of as much as five liters per day.
Friesen believes installations like this one could soon be providing clean, quality drinking water to homes, schools and businesses across the United States and beyond – and why not, to rural villages, desert towns or urban slums in the developing world...
Friesen’s clean water doesn’t come cheap. A typical setup for a home will set you back about $4500 -- $2000 for each of two Sources and an additional $500 for installation. Friesen says for a household that regularly buys bottled water, payback will take about five years. Considering that Americans drank, on average, 40 gallons of bottled water last year, he sees plenty of potential customers. Friesen says that over its lifetime, a two-panel set up may help to remove 70,000 plastic bottles from circulation.
But Friesen has a pitch and a plan to push Source well beyond homes. Consider a school that’s had issues with lead in its water. Installing an array of Source – say a dozen or two of the devices -- could be cheaper than replacing decrepit infrastructure. Contamination doesn’t have to be on the scale of Flint, Michigan for the idea to make sense. Last year, the Los Angeles Unified School District, for example, spent nearly $20 million to retrofit or remove 48,000 contaminated drinking fountains. Zero Mass' backers believe numbers like these point to Source's viability not only for homes but also for institutions and organizations.
www.forbes.com/sites/miguelhelft/2017/11/15/meet-zero-mass-water-whose-solar-panels-pull-drinking-water-from-the-air/#60e8c88f370e
To show me his technological sleight of hand, Friesen invites me to a hillside house in Berkeley, California on a sunny afternoon. There, in a shaded courtyard, we each sample a cup of water that flows from a drinking fountain. The water is cool and delicious – and it was made out of thin air. Literally.
Nanomaterials – and physics, of course – played a role too. The drinking fountain is fed by a flexible pipe that leads to the house’s roof. There sit two Friesen’s devices, called Source Hydropanels. Each looks like solar panel mounted atop a metal box. The system extracts moisture out of the air at a rate of as much as five liters per day.
Friesen believes installations like this one could soon be providing clean, quality drinking water to homes, schools and businesses across the United States and beyond – and why not, to rural villages, desert towns or urban slums in the developing world...
Friesen’s clean water doesn’t come cheap. A typical setup for a home will set you back about $4500 -- $2000 for each of two Sources and an additional $500 for installation. Friesen says for a household that regularly buys bottled water, payback will take about five years. Considering that Americans drank, on average, 40 gallons of bottled water last year, he sees plenty of potential customers. Friesen says that over its lifetime, a two-panel set up may help to remove 70,000 plastic bottles from circulation.
But Friesen has a pitch and a plan to push Source well beyond homes. Consider a school that’s had issues with lead in its water. Installing an array of Source – say a dozen or two of the devices -- could be cheaper than replacing decrepit infrastructure. Contamination doesn’t have to be on the scale of Flint, Michigan for the idea to make sense. Last year, the Los Angeles Unified School District, for example, spent nearly $20 million to retrofit or remove 48,000 contaminated drinking fountains. Zero Mass' backers believe numbers like these point to Source's viability not only for homes but also for institutions and organizations.
www.forbes.com/sites/miguelhelft/2017/11/15/meet-zero-mass-water-whose-solar-panels-pull-drinking-water-from-the-air/#60e8c88f370e
Bob
