Is this type of tech a hoax or it is really thing that was not considered enough for the upcoming water crisis around the world?
Is this type of tech a hoax or it is really thing that was not considered enough for the upcoming water crisis around the world?
After checking this dude’s website, it needs 475 Kwh/m3 in a desert condition which is a lot of energy.
With this in mind, using the data within this website, to achieve a daily 100 kWh electricity output, the people interested in this device will require 50 to 52 solar panels, each rated at 400 Watts. Now, if we multiply this times 5, they might 250 solar panels to deliver that kind of power.
In a hypothetic scenario, what could be done to make this practical?
Unfortunately, nothing really. The thermodynamics are just severely unfavourable. Water is an amazing coolant, by far one of the best. It takes up an insane amount of energy to vapourise. That Unfortunately also means it takes up a lot of energy to turn it back.
It would make more sense to focus on developing conventional technologies and reforestation in the Sahara. That path is a lot more viable
to give you an idea of the level of efficiency we’re aiming for desalination with the latest tech rn, this paper from 2020* is saying that these news techs are shooting for under 3 Kwh/m3 power usage. so we would need a bare minimum 158x reduction in power usage just to match the most experimental of desalination techs. Now, it doesnt need to get quite this low to match desalination because of the problem with dealing with all the waste products from desalinating waste water, but it still means we need to get pretty close to that. so, what could be done to make this practical? a leap in tech akin to the level of progress we’ve seen in semiconductors, which seems very unlikely to me at this point in time. so, we will needs at bare minimum, 2 or 3 decades, if not centuries (if it’s possible at all) to match that.
*I admit this is just one paper I found in like 10 seconds of searching, but this matches with other stuff I’ve read about desalination vs de-humidification in the past. still, maybe we’ll all be super surprised and there’s some secret to easily drawing water out of the atmosphere that we’re all missing and we’ll discover and it will usher in a new age of easily accessible fresh water.