In a veritable twist on Jesus turning water into wine, here we have a device that turns air into water. Now, not only is that sheer genius, it is also useful considering sustainable development.
After creating a shipping container that would convert air into water, California designers David Hertz and Rich Groden were the obvious winners of the Water Abundance XPrize. Their device was successful in satisfying the water needs of 100 people.
This competition began in 2016 with a focus to create water out of nature, which would be increasingly cheap (2 cents a litre). About 100 teams had participated in this, all trying to draw out 2000 litres per day simply out of the moisture present. Groden and Hertz’s team Skywater/Sky source Alliance were the final winners as their project was the best example of decentralised access to water, which would prevent any monopoly over it.
The creation called ‘WeDew’ is actually a combination of two devices that work in sync with each other to create water. This is also an abbreviation for the system they use – wood to energy deployed water system. The first machine is called the Skywater, which is a generator created by Groden and basically, it emulates the functions of clouds. It forms drops of water which are condensed in a tank and trapped for later use.
The other device is a gasifier that helps in providing the energy required to start such a machine. It needs wood or coconut pieces to produce the amount of heat that would be required to produce an optimum environment for the device to operate efficiently.