The whole process takes 12 hours but can produce a staggering 2,000 liters, or about 500 gallons of drinking-quality water per day.
"When a severe water shortage hit the Indian city of Kozhikode in the state of Kerala, a group of engineers turned to science fiction to keep the taps running.
Like everyone else in the city, engineering student Swapnil Shrivastav received a ration of two buckets of water a day collected from Indiaโs arsenal of small water towers.
It was a โwatershedโ moment for Shrivastav, whoย according to the BBCย had won a student competition four years earlier on the subject of tackling water scarcity, and armed with a hypothetical template from the originalย Star Warsย films, Shrivastav and two partners set to work harvesting water from the humid air.
โOne element of inspiration was fromย Star Warsย where thereโs an air-to-water device. I thought why donโt we give it a try? It was more of a curiosity project,โ he told the BBC.
According to โWookiepediaโ aย โmoisture vaporatorโย is a device used on moisture farms to capture water from a dry planetโs atmosphere, like Tatooine, where protagonist Luke Skywalker grew up.
This fictional device functions according toย Star Warsย lore by coaxing moisture from the air by means of refrigerated condensers, which generate low-energy ionization fields. Captured water is then pumped or gravity-directed into a storage cistern that adjusts its pH levels. Vaporators are capable of collecting 1.5 liters of water per day.
Pictured: Moisture vaporators on the largely abandoned Star Wars film set of Mos Espa, in Tunisia
If science fiction authors could come up with the particulars of such a device, Shrivastav must have felt his had a good chance of succeeding. He and colleagues Govinda Balaji and Venkatesh Raja foundedย Uravu Labs, a Bangalore-based startup in 2019.
Their initial offering is a machine that converts air to water using a liquid desiccant. Absorbing moisture from the air, sunlight or renewable energy heats the desiccant to around 100ยฐF which releases the captured moisture into a chamber where itโs condensed into drinking water.
The whole process takes 12 hours but can produce a staggering 2,000 liters, or about 500 gallons of drinking-quality water per day. [Note: that IS staggering! That's huge!!] Uravu has since had to adjust course due to the cost of manufacturing and running the machinesโitโs just too high for civic use with current materials technology.
โWe had to shift to commercial consumption applications as they were ready to pay us and itโs a sustainability driver for them,โ Shrivastav explained. This pivot has so far been enough to keep the start-up afloat, and they produce water for 40 different hospitality clients.
Looking ahead, Shrivastav, Raja, and Balaji are planning to investigate whether the desiccant can be made more efficient; can it work at a lower temperature to reduce running costs, or is there another material altogether that might prove more cost-effective?
Theyโre also looking at running their device attached to data centers in a pilot project that would see them utilize the waste heat coming off the centers to heat the desiccant."
-via Good News Network, May 30, 2024
