MIT researchers have unveiled a portable, window‑sized device dubbed the atmospheric water harvesting window (AWHW) that can extract clean drinking water directly from air, even in death valley

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• stroz@infosec.pub ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Are the plans open source, freely available online? Or is this a situation where you need at modern manufacturing facility to produce one?

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  • Passerby6497@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Or is this a situation where you need at modern manufacturing facility to produce one?

    Probably the second one:

    The team also shaped the hydrogel into a dome-like origami array, like a sheet of bubble wrap. The unique structure increased surface area and maximized how much the material could swell so it would hold more water vapor. The team then sandwiched the gel between two glass panels roughly the size of a small window, both coated with a cooling chemical layer, and added tubing to collect the water.

    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.

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    • rimjob_rainer@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      5.5 wizards of oz?

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    • boonhet@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Might work better where it’s more humid. Might bring humidity to more bearable levels if you have a lot of them?

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    • treadful@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Interesting. That design sounds a lot like vapor chambers that cell phones use for cooling. Just, not sealed.

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• phoenixz@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  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?

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  • BombOmOm@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    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)

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• floo@retrolemmy.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Now all I need is a droid that speaks the binary language of moisture vaporators…

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• BombOmOm@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  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.

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  • protist@mander.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    There are plenty ways to purify water once it’s been obtained

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    • BombOmOm@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      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.

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  • ryannathans@aussie.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    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

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    • BombOmOm@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      No electricity required.

      Just means it produces even less water.

      Uses outside air.

      Will breed even nastier shit in the water.

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  • phoenixz@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    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.

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  • the_crotch@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    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

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• vane@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Probably this is paper arxiv.org/pdf/2201.10385

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  • Akasazh@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Thnx!

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