Clever Gadget Sucks Water From Dry Air

[Earnest Cavalli]

Clever Gadget Sucks Water From Dry Air


Are your crops dying due to unseasonably warm weather and drought conditions? Airdrop has you covered.

Let's assume for a moment that you grow crops. Food crops. Important food crops that provide sustenance for millions of otherwise starving people. Despite the rosy picture Farmville paints, your life is a hard one. You have to contend with insects, crop rotation schedules and worst of all, drought.

How are you supposed to water your cabbage if there's no rain and those miserly Egyptians won't share their irrigation techniques? (We're also assuming you live inside the nightmares of Sid Meier.)

That's where Airdrop comes in. Invented by Edward Linacre, a student at the Swinburne University of Technology, Airdrop is an "air harvester," meaning that it sucks water straight out of the air and distributes it to your thirsty plants.

So how does Airdrop work? Cool Hunting explains:

With a deceptively modest design, Airdrop filters hot environmental air through a turbine, feeding it through a copper tubing system-with copper wool to maximize surface area-and into the earth where it cools and releases moisture. The dry air is then re-released into the atmosphere and the collected water pumped through semi-porous hoses to the plant roots. In his initial prototype, which was much smaller than the current design, Linacre was able to produce a liter of water per day.

As a result of his design, Linacre won this year's James Dyson Award [http://www.jamesdysonaward.org/Projects/Project.aspx?ID=1722&RegionId=0&Winindex=0], an international design prize aimed at encouraging young inventors. Both Linacre and his university will receive £10,000 (nearly $16,000 USD) from the James Dyson Foundation.

More crucially however, this kind of idea is invaluable for developing countries that rely on sustenance farming for food, and Linacre's clever, simple design means that Airdrop is both affordable and easy to replicate. "A lo-tech solution is perfect for rural farmers. Something that they can install. Something that they can maintain themselves," Linacre explains.

So, what'd you do during college? Edward Linacre invented a device that will feed millions of people. That's pretty impressive.

What's that? You played a ton of Halo in between tacos and bong rips? That's cool too ... I guess.

Source: Cool Hunting [http://www.coolhunting.com/tech/airdrop.php]




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[MrLee1990]

We've found a planet like tatooine; now Moisture farming! All we now need is that $15.6 Septillion for the death star.

 

[AhumbleKnight]

The spice must flow.

This is a realy cool invention. And with so many farming regions accross the world that have regular and extended drought, this invention is a life saver.

 

[vrbtny]

Doesn't this already exist? I thought they were called Atmospheric-Water-Generators.

 

[thenumberthirteen]

So now we can all live out our dreams, become Moisture Farmers and live underground drinking Blue Milk.

Though isn't this just a Dehumidifier?

 

[Frost27]

Vaporators? Why, my first job was programming binary load lifters. Very similar to your vaporators in many respects!


They would have developed this a lot sooner but the Tuskens kept kidnapping them whenever they would go out to pick the mushrooms that grow on the units in the field.

 

[Alar]

Give this man a Nobel Peace Prize. We finally have water vaporators!

 

[Earnest Cavalli]

Doesn't this already exist? I thought they were called Atmospheric-Water-Generators.

Similar devices have existed in the past, but they were generally complex, super-expensive machines. The key part of this invention is that it's cheap, reliable and takes almost no training to operate/repair.

 

[BehattedWanderer]

I'm curious. Does it work where there is often less than 10% humidity? Long hard droughts, long hot days...if it works in even extremely low humidity conditions, then I do believe this is viable. But the ground in Texas is a fickle mistress, sure enough, and between the cedars, the clay, the crops, the deer, the cattle, and the cities, water levels are always low during growing seasons. What moisture there is in the air gets soaked up quickly by starving plants, and the ground hardly gets to retain water during the spring, summer, and fall. Yeah, the water here can be redirected to crops, but surely there has to be a minimum sustainable humidity level?

 

[Zorg Machine]

I plan on hiding giant versions of these things in hills and mountains, drying out the air and turning a big portion of the world into wastelands.
And when all hope seems lost, I will appear with a hydrator, using the water I harvested previously.

 

[ike42]

I would like to see the amount of water this device could produce in a truly arid environment. It's a good idea though, it seems to base its simplicity on the idea of geo-thermal cooling.

 

[Sampler]

You had me at "Clever Gadget Sucks..."

 

[Formica Archonis]

Star Wars and Dune references in the first two posts. Good job, lads.

 

[Frizzle]

Part of the "not being able to grow crops" thing is also that there aren't enough nutrients in the soil, which this doesn't fix. Also, if you get a ton of these huge things taking moisture out of the air, it's going to negatively affect the environment. Some plants need moisture in the air too.

Not trying to take away from his invention, but if people want to farm, they should go live near places that have water. I also understand that this is a small model, but those things would have to produce HUGE amounts of water in order to feed crops. Dirt will hold water and not let plants get to it until there is a certain amount of water around.

That said, congratulations to him, and it is a cool idea

 

[Asuka Soryu]

"So, what'd you do during college? Edward Linacre invented a device that will feed millions of people. That's pretty impressive."

I piloted a giant mech saving the world from destruction, before getting sliced in half.

Thank god for modern medicine, a few stitches and I'm okay.