Just passing this along for the Optimism Department:
Water from wind
...Max Whisson has come up with a brilliant and very simple idea.
It involves getting water out of the air. And he's not talking about cloud-seeding for rain. Indeed, he just might have come up with a way of ending our ancient dependence on rain, that increasingly unreliable source.
And that's not all. As well as the apparently empty air providing us with limitless supplies of water, Max has devised a way of making the same 'empty' air provide the power for the process...
There's a lot of water in the air. It rises from the surface of the oceans to a height of almost 100 kilometres. You feel it in high humidity, but there's almost as much invisible moisture in the air above the Sahara or the Nullarbor as there is in the steamy tropics. The water that pools beneath an air-conditioned car, or in the tray under an old fridge, demonstrates the principle: cool the air and you get water. And no matter how much water we might take from the air, we'd never run out. Because the oceans would immediately replace it.
Trouble is, refrigerating air is a very costly business. Except when you do it Max's way, with the Whisson windmill...
...Usually a windmill has three blades facing into the wind. But Whisson's design has many blades, each as aerodynamic as an aircraft wing, and each employing "lift" to get the device spinning. I've watched them whirr into action in Whisson's wind tunnel at the most minimal settings. They start spinning long, long before a conventional windmill would begin to respond. I saw them come alive when a colleague opened an internal door.
...They don't face into the wind like a conventional windmill; they're arranged vertically, within an elegant column, and take the wind from any direction.
The secret of Max's design is how his windmills, whirring away in the merest hint of a wind, cool the air as it passes by...
With three or four of Max's magical machines on hills at our farm we could fill the tanks and troughs, and weather the drought. One small Whisson windmill on the roof of a suburban house could keep your taps flowing. Biggies on office buildings, whoppers on skyscrapers, could give independence from the city's water supply. And plonk a few hundred in marginal outback land - specifically to water tree-lots - and you could start to improve local rainfall.
Allelujah!!
Joe from the driest European country.
Now, that's cool.
Are we feeling punny today, Grim?
Sounds wonderful, but I cant help but notice that the post contains no links to other articles on the subject. Was that an oversight? Normally, other web pages are referenced as source material.
#4 Eric
Oops, wrong link. I fixed it. It refers to an article in The Australian.
I have the feeling, Cicero, you taking the opportunity to post a bit of humor at Max's and Phillip Adam's expense. Shame on you. Max is a serious physicist and Adams a serious journalist.
Folks,
BEWARE... Serious physicist or not, serious journalist or not, this announcement hasn't yet passed the 'sniff test':
Indeed, the article doesn't pass any of the tests. Yet, it is a journalist piece, so it can be forgiven for its Hubris factor. After all, the breathless (and almost endless) articles in the early 1980's about Cold Fusion couldn't extricate themselves from blythely alluding to the solution of all the worlds energy problems, and flying cars and, and, and... (insert hyperventillation here)
To summarize:
Journalist meets inventor who says he has a machine that generates power, isolates water from the atmosphere, is uniquely efficient, and has some demonstration models of the thing.
Journalist is impressed by "aerodynamic like an airplane wing", and "even the air in the desert has nearly as much water as the rain-forest", and so forth.
Those hubristic facts support the value of such a machine, were it to really work. But they don't compel me to believe that the machine does work. There are no pictures, there is no one there to ensure that a little tiny capillary of water is running into the device to 'demonstrate' its water recovery mechanism. No discussion of the irreducible thermodynamic admixture problem. No statements of minimum wind-speed, scalability, even hints as to the "size versus return" of the least efficient prototype.
Journalist is impressed by the revolutionary angle, the obvious pop-science value of the claim. Just as Popular Science in the late 1970's with complete seriousness and many-a-technical drawing fleshed out the idea of a magnetic monopole motor (which of course there are NO examples of today), just so - journalistic reporting of hubristic and conspiratorially "quashed" invention does not make an invention BE.
So. Show me some pictures.
Show me a skeptic with an engineering background looking for the "cheats".
Show me a cup of water, tell me how long it took to make, give the dimensions of the thing, and let other scientists go about building one, to see if its poppycock or not. If the idea is in the patent office, it is protected, and the inventor has nothing to worry about.
GoatGuy
The only thing I don't like is the rather predictable "call to government action" at the end of the article. If this guy's devices are so wonderful, there should be tons of VCs beating a path to his door - especially if, as described, they're unique and therefore patentable. If they actually work and can solve real needs, they'll hit the ground far faster this way than by disappearing into a research black hole.
The guy would do better to call Vinod Khosla than to horse around with this or that bureaucrat.
Goatguy, I agree wholeheartedly.
When I first read the Adams opinion column, I began a writing a comment that started, "I smell fish!" Not wanting post it without some backup, I googled Max Whisson and looked, briefly, at a few of the first links on the list.
One of top links referred to his desalinization idea all the way back to 2001, not a good sign for a blockbuster invention only an investor away from going on the market. But I stopped looking for backup after I skimmed this opinion piece by Max about the infamous meme about depleted unranium in Iraq from 2003. Really, it (on the page, do a find: Whisson) must be read to know why I stopped.
Anyway, I had second thoughts about Cicero's reason for posting it and suspected it was a skeptical take, thus what I guess is my way too subtle, teasing agreement.
Here's hoping Max will post his invention, demonstrating its mankind saving properties, on YouTube. I'd be more than happy to buy two if they are small.
Water from air is not a new concept. There are machines marketed in the US today (see following stock - WPUR.OB) that act as water fountains that pull water from the air and makes sure it is filtered/UV and recirculating. Runs on electricity and has a filter cartridge good for a year. The machine also has the capability to run on solar power. Great for third world regions where electricity is scarce. And yes, you do need to take into account the level of water vapor in the air... though it seems even minimal levels will produce water over time. So could the device in the article work based upon wind power? I would say there is a better than likely possibility, even though I cannot speak to the efficiency levels or freshness factors that detailed drawings and info would provide.
Oh, by the way, see website - www.waterpureinternational.com
And every one of you blokes has overlooked the ENORMOUS and REVOLUTIONARY advantage of such a MOMENTOUS INVENTION -- it's the solution for GLOBAL WARMING!
Thanks Don ~ we needed that.
Don, are you implying the possibility these can be used to generate snow in the antarctic, thus lowering global sea levels?
Wind traps a'la Dune!
Oh...
Which is fiction, BTW!
Isn't this what Luke's uncle did on Tatooine?
#12 Donald
Does this mean that Gore may be out of a job?
If that's true, I'll buy some.
By the way, he does want to patent it - or at least he claims to.
Trouble is, refrigerating air is a very costly business. Except when you do it Max’s way, with the Whisson windmill. Until his inventions are protected by international patents, I’m not going to give details. Max isn’t interested in profits – he just wants to save the world – but the technology remains “commercial in confidence” to protect his small band of investors and to encourage others.
I think Cicero posted it correctly for "the Optimism Department". It's certainly that - optimistic.
Sounds perilously close to a perpetual motion machine, if you ask me. For one thing, harnessing the torque of the windmills would reduce their cooling effect. For another, collection of the cooled air (in order to extract the water) ought to create a back-pressure that would reduce the efficiency of the windmills.
I'm not saying that Whisson's machine might not be more efficient than other wind-driven approaches. But I find it hard to imagine that it's a panacea.