Air-water technology goes mobile

from ecoGizmo (201 articles)

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February 21, 2006 With around 20% of the world’s population struggling to get adequate supplies of safe drinking water, the rapid evolution of air-water technology (which extracts water from the air) could well become one of the most significant enabling technologies in the history of mankind. We’ve already awarded the invention of the century, but we believe air-water technology is close to being equally as significant as it will enable man to begin to reconsider the cultivation of vast tracts of previously inhospitable land.

Believe it or not, there are approximately 4000 cubic miles of water in the earth’s atmosphere, which accounts for why it rains, why air conditioning units extract water from the air, and how Atmospheric Water Technologies’ machinery manages to extract thousands of litres of drinkable water per day from thin air. We wrote up the technology in detail 18 months ago, but things have changed a lot in the short time since that first article.

Now the company produces an AW100i model which combines water extraction from the atmosphere with a built-in icemaker to make a unit that can be powered from a generator and produce 50 litre of ice and 50 litres of drinkable water per day. More significantly, the company has now developed a mobile version of its air-to-water machine known as the aw1000m (caution: large WMV video file).

The tandem-wheeled trailer-mounted US$48,000 aw1000m will produce over 1,000 liters of purified and filtered water daily, store it in on-board water tanks, and dispense it for drinking, washing or via two built-in shower units as part of the total water producing system/concept. The machine was developed as an all-in-one solution for the needs of the Indian army in the field and is suitable for transportation over rugged terrain and powered by a diesel generator. The machine can be fitted with an automatic plastic pouch filling machine which produces 25 plastic pouches of purified drinking water per minute for US$0.01 per 800cc pack.

Atmospheric Water Technologies, Inc. company president Michael J. Zwebner says that the company is planning to produce several more advanced and customized machines which will be offered to a International Aid organizations, such as the United Nations and the Red Cross for humanitarian work.

The development of the aw1000m is only the beginning – a 5000 litre military unit is under development with an array of ancillary systems, such as the providing there’s sufficient humidity in the environment, there’s really no limit to the amount of water that can be extracted. Indeed, in humid locations and climates, existing machines can often provide far more than their rating. The machines are rated for their literage at 67 percent humidity, but with just a slight increase to say, 70 percent humidity, the rating of the 1000 litre machine jumps to 1300 litres per day.

Large-sized air water machines can be either site located or trailer mounted allowing easy and fast transportation to any destination all over the world for immediate deployment in the case of war and/or other emergencies.

We spoke with the Australian distributor of AirWater, Brent Loebel, in preparing this article and were given some valuable insight into the development of the market both in Ausdtralia and internationally.

How does the air-water technology compare to desalination as a means of providing drinkable water?

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