• Sign in
  • Sign up
Elektrine
EN
Log in Register
Modes
Overview Chat Timeline Communities Gallery Lists Friends Email Vault DNS VPN
Back to Timeline !technology @Hi_ImSomeone
In reply to 1 earlier post
@Tattorack@lemmy.world on lemmy.world Open parent
Well… There would also have to be water to actually collect from the air. Thunderfoot made a really good video about these dehumidifiers when yet another one popped up on Kickstarter claiming to end water shortages.
Open parent Original URL
0
0
1
0
Hi_ImSomeone in !technology
@Hi_ImSomeone@lemmy.world · Mar 02
You’re absolutely correct that there has to be water in the air. However part of the trick to these panels is that they’re not steady state. They have a day cycle and a night cycle. During the night is where they do most of the work of absorbing the water from the air. Over a number of cycles I have overseen, the humidity in the air rises dramatically during the night. This helps these panels in terms of air extraction, since they work on a humidity basis, rather than a total-air-water-content. Think dilution or osmosis when it comes to the actual absorbtion mechanism. When you do the math, it also doesn’t really seem like there’s alot of water in the air. Only something like 10-40 grams of water, especially depending on the outdoor temperature. We ran indoor tests with a panel a few sqm in size, and even in a small indoor warehouse, it was not able to dehumidify the warehouse to any significant levels. Maybe at most 5% humidity delta. However air is not static, and wind is always blowing, even when it seems really weak. There’s a huge amount of atmosphere above the ground, and unless the panels can absorb the water from the clouds too, the localized de-humidification that happens isn’t going to be significant. It’s like trying to suck up all water on a beach. The waves are going to replace it shortly enough. So the one practical limit of these panels that is most frequently missed is the solar aspect. The MOF materials are like a sponge. You can absorb all the water in the air, but you still need to take the water of the MOF. The limit depends on the sensible and latent heat of the water, while in the sponge. MOF doesn’t actually really change the boiling point of water at all, so you’re really essentially creating a water distillation tower. In 1sqm of land, the most irradiance you’re going to get is about 1kw/sqm. 1kwh can boil about 10 liters of water. Taking that into account, over a 8 hour solar day. That means at most a single square meter of solar panel could generate 80 liters of water per day. It’s alot, but considering solar losses, glass loss, and thermal loss, more practical limits would probably be like 40 liters. The MOF material also required sensible heat as well, so already a huge portion of incoming solar energy is gone to heating the environment and raising temperature. In all, you’d have to cover a huge amount of acres before this would dent the atmosphere in terms of humidity. The 1000 liters a day can really only happen when you have a large solar collection area, plus absorbtion surface area to back it up.
View on lemmy.world
0
0
0
Sign in to interact

Loading comments...

About Community

technology
Technology
!technology@lemmy.world

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules
  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots
  • @L4s@lemmy.world
  • @autotldr@lemmings.world
  • @PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks
  • @wikibot@lemmy.world
83902
Members
18816
Posts
Created: June 11, 2023
View All Posts
313k7r1n3

Company

  • About
  • Contact
  • FAQ

Legal

  • Terms of Service
  • Privacy Policy
  • VPN Policy

Email Settings

IMAP: mail.elektrine.com:993

POP3: pop3.elektrine.com:995

SMTP: mail.elektrine.com:465

SSL/TLS required

Support

  • support@elektrine.com
  • Report Security Issue

Connect

Tor Hidden Service

khav7sdajxu6om3arvglevskg2vwuy7luyjcwfwg6xnkd7qtskr2vhad.onion
© 2026 Elektrine. All rights reserved. • Server: 05:34:32 UTC