Discussion»Statements»Rosie's Corner» ZERO MASS WATER is a company that pulls water out of the air. Between 2-5 litres per day per solar panel. Ever hear of it?
I hadn't either until recently. Thank you for your reply and Happy Monday to thee and thine.
This post was edited by RosieG at August 16, 2021 6:50 AM MDT
New name to me, and a fancifully unscientific one at that as there is of course no such thing as "zero mass" water. I can't help thinking this is an example of sales people abusing scientific language to talk up a practical but totally unoriginal idea!
I assume as Benedick hints, it is simply a solar-powered dehumidifier - cooling the air passing through it to below the dew-point, and collecting the resulting condensate. Nothing many householders don't already do, using the distilled water from a dehumidifier to fill steam-irons, carpet-shampooers, and the like.
It needs warm, very humid air to be effective; but if solar-powered I imagine it could be very useful in certain situations.
The point to watch though is what you do with the water. Assuming cleanliness of the plant itself, the water would be sterile but also extremely pure, and so not good to drink alone.
WHY IS THAT? Why would drinking "extremely pure" water not be good to drink? Maybe it's a dumb question but there it is! Thank you for your very informative reply Durdle. I think that company has been around for awhile. I had never heard of anything like that until I saw a show that featured a segment on it. There is aTV show here called "The Henry Ford Innovation Nation" or something like that. They had a segment about it and Jim thought it was amazing so I paid attention. I did not know that our atmosphere was so heavily laden with moisture or that you could capture some of it. Happy Monday to thee and thine m'dear! :)
I'm not sure but I think pure water tends not to work very well in the body, affecting the osmosis that organs and cells rely on for transferring materials through their walls. Normally the water we drink is from the ground or rivers so has tiny traces of minerals dissolved in it, but our food gives us most of those anyway.
The atmosphere usually is fairly humid but it depends heavily on temperature, pressure and availability of water to be evaporated. I don't know if you see this effect where you live, but the air can be quite hazy on bright Summer days and very clear in Winter. That haze is very, very fine mist - countless millions of microscopic water droplets.
Dew is another version of the same thing. The hot air in the sunlit day absorbs water from the sea, lakes, rivers and ground, and that transpired by plants. When the air cools at night the surplus water condenses onto exposed surfaces.
That machine extracting water from the air is effectively producing artificial dew inside itself.
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Plants, other than succulents that need hold onto the stuff, put a surprising amount of water into the air. Fully mature, healthy, moderatly large trees in full leaf can move a couple of hundred gallons of water a day. I wonder how much those magnificent giant red-woods are putting back into the atmosphere!
I remember once working stripped to the waist outdoors on a cloudless Summer afternoon, and wondering why I could feel a very soft, slow spray of liquid. It was being exuded by the leaves of an adjacent oak tree no more than about 20 feet high.
Element 99 