Submitted 4 weeks ago by Khuda@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
https://singularityhub.com/2025/07/10/this-device-pulls-water-from-thin-air-even-in-death-valley
These are called dehumidifiers and you should not drink the water that comes out of them.
The condensed water is pure, yes. But dehumidifiers almost instantly become a breeding ground for all kinds of nasty shit. Nasty shit that is now in your ‘pure’ water.
There are plenty ways to purify water once it’s been obtained
Absolutely. And that is the problem you actually need to solve in the places lacking potable water. They generally have water, it just isn’t potable.
Read the article. No electricity required. Uses outside air. Not really a “dehumidifier” unless you want to play strange pedantics. Just like a water filter, you probably wouldn’t suck on the filter element
No electricity required.
Just means it produces even less water.
Uses outside air.
Will breed even nastier shit in the water.
The condensed water is pure, yes
“Pure” is not a good thing when talking about water. Your body relies on minerals dissolved in dr- nking water. Also, water is a power solvent and if it is t already saturated with minerals it will absorb calcium right out of your bones
Really?
The waterseeer was an outright scam that never would have worked because physics, yet collecting millions in funding. And that wasn’t the first on either
This one is no difference, it’s a scam.
Now all I need is a droid that speaks the binary language of moisture vaporators…
Ooohhh another dehumidifier!
But no no no no, this time, THIS time, MIT is involved so it MUST be true, because MIT would never link it’s mlname to yet another Sammy product, right?
OOOHH, And this device will even get water out of desert air, you say? Like like all the other water out of dry air products that were all such obvious scams that any 15yo could use highschool physics to explain it to you?.
Well call me sold, I’m all in in this one! By the way, I have this nice heat little bridge in my backyard, you’d LOVE it! Pay first, the. I’ll show ya, promise!
And just to make it really really clear: no, I haven’t read the article and yes, it’s a scam, and how do I know? Basic physics and, you know, seeing these devices come by every 2-4 years like clockwork and every damn time some university is funding it or attaching their names to it for some reason. I don’t even need to read the article at this point.
Here is a question: can universities please require that students have taken some basic physics courses before they allow them to start dumb scams like this?
I never understood why people keep falling for the ‘dehumidifer will solve world water shortages’ thing over and over. It’s an old idea and there is damn good reason you don’t see this ‘obvious’ solution deployed everywhere. (Check out the WaterSeer video if you would like to know more)
Without even clicking I already knew it was thunderf00t and yes, you’re totally right.
So sad that he barely publishes new material anymore
Probably this is paper arxiv.org/pdf/2201.10385
Thnx!
stroz@infosec.pub 4 weeks ago
Are the plans open source, freely available online? Or is this a situation where you need at modern manufacturing facility to produce one?
Passerby6497@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Probably the second one:
Assuming I’m wrong, you’d still need a ton of those for a single person. They got approximately 5.5oz in one night from one panel in death valley, but a quick Google says you need about 32oz per hour in high heat. You’d need just under 6 panels/person/hour you need water, which takes away from the idea that this is portable or really usable for hiking when you’d need like 80+ of these things to get anywhere close to having enough water for one day.
rimjob_rainer@discuss.tchncs.de 4 weeks ago
5.5 wizards of oz?
boonhet@sopuli.xyz 4 weeks ago
Might work better where it’s more humid. Might bring humidity to more bearable levels if you have a lot of them?
treadful@lemmy.zip 4 weeks ago
Interesting. That design sounds a lot like vapor chambers that cell phones use for cooling. Just, not sealed.