‘Water’ out of thin air can be done: experts
Ooho balls ‘biodegradable’
LONDON, April 15, (RTRS): People living in arid, drought-ridden areas may soon be able to get water straight from a source that’s all around them — the air, American researchers said Thursday.
Scientists have developed a box that can convert low-humidity air into water, producing several litres every 12 hours, they wrote in the journal Science.
“It takes water from the air and it captures it,” said Evelyn Wang, a mechanical engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and co-author of the paper.
The technology could be “really great for remote areas where there’s really limited infrastructure”, she said. The system, which is currently in the prototype phase, uses a material that resembles powdery sand to trap air in its tiny pores. When heated by the sun or another source, water molecules in the trapped air are released and condensed — essentially “pulling” the water out of the air, the scientists said.
A recent test on a roof at MIT confirmed that the system can produce about a glass of water every hour in 20 to 30 percent humidity.
Companies like Water-Gen and EcoloBlue already produce atmospheric water-generation units that create water from air. What is special about this new prototype, though, is that it can cultivate water in lowhumidity environments using no energy, Wang said.
“It doesn’t have to be this complicated system that requires some kind refrigeration cycle,” she said in an interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
An estimated one third of the world’s population lives in areas with low relative humidity, the scientists said. Areas going through droughts often experience dry air, but Wang said the new product could help them still get access to water.
“Now we can get to regions that really are pretty dry, arid regions,” she said. “We can provide them with a device, and they can use it pretty simply.”
Personalised
The technology opens the door for what co-author Omar Yaghi called “personalised water”.
Yaghi, a chemistry professor at University of California, Berkeley, envisions a future where the water is produced off-grid for individual homes and possibly farms using the device.
“This application extends beyond drinking water and household purposes, off grid. It opens the way for use of (the technology) to water large regions as in agriculture.”
In the next few years, Wang said, the developers hope to find a way to reproduce the devices on a large scale and eventually create a formal product. The resulting device, she believes, will be relatively affordable and accessible.
Small transparent spheres filled with natural or flavoured water could help provide a solution to London’s plastic waste problem, according to the start-up company based in the British capital that manufactures them.
With many cities around the world struggling to dispose of vast numbers of used plastic water bottles, the biodegradable ‘Ooho balls’ have begun quenching the thirst of consumers at special events in San Francisco and London. The balls, which resemble large bubbles, have a jelly-like membrane made of plant and seaweed extracts. The company, Skipping Rocks Lab, says the membranes decompose after four to six weeks if not consumed.
A report published by the London municipal authorities on Thursday said more than 4,000 plastic bottles had been removed from the River Thames in a one month period last year, demonstrating the scale of the waste problem.
“We think Ooho, may not be the solution for all the applications that plastic bottles have, but definitely for short term consumption it could be a solution,” Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez, the founder of Skipping Rocks Lab, told Reuters.
In a trial near London Bridge on Wednesday, the innovative balls drew a mixture of surprise, amusement and delight among those who sampled them.
Solution
London’s city assembly said Ooho was a step forward.
“It could be part of the solution but not the only solution. You also need to be able to refill bottles at railway stations for example,” said Leonie Cooper, the Chair of the assembly’s environment committee.
Skipping Rocks, who spent three years developing Ooho, said they produce up to 2,000 balls a day but hope to increase that figure, extend the shelf-life of the product and improve the resistance of the membranes.
The company aims to target, among other consumers, marathon runners, who will be able to dispose of the Oohos mid-race without concerns about the environment. It is also considering encapsulating alcohol for a whole new market.
“People see these small round bubbles and they just think ‘shots’. So that’s definitely something we’re looking at,” said Skipping Rocks Lab Chief Operating Officer Lise Honsinger.
“We have encapsulated alcohol, we want to perfect it, and then hopefully this will be the Jaegerbomb of the future.”
A park in the Chinese capital, Beijing, has found a high-tech solution to stop people from using excessive amounts of toilet paper.
The Temple of Heaven Park has equipped public washrooms with a paper dispenser that uses facial recognition technology to record each user and then roll out a strip of about 70 cm of paper for one trip to the bathroom.
The same user will have to wait for nine minutes before they can get another strip of toilet paper.
“This machine was actually designed in order to stop people from wasting toilet paper,” said Lei Zhenshan, a designer and sales executive for dispenser maker Shoulian Technology.
“If the paper was put in an uncontrolled device, then people will waste it endlessly,” he told Reuters Television.
This month, Chinese media reported that visitors to the park’s washrooms were taking unnecessarily large amounts of toilet paper from dispensers.