YouTuber Thunderf00t takes on the “WaterSeer.” If you haven’t heard of it – and I hadn’t – the idea is simple: a device that uses a wind-driven fan to blow air down a tube into a buried chamber, where the lower temperature a few meters underground is used to condense water out of the air. At first blush, this sort of thing sounds feasible… until you do the math, and it turns out to not only be infeasible, but basically impossible. What gets *really* sad is that a bunch of Berkeley (apparently) engineering students are working away on the idea, apparently without having first run the numbers to see if it’s even possible.
The WaterSeer is essentially a dehumidifier that does not plug into the wall and uses dirt as a heat sink rather than an active refrigeration unit. Now, I grew up in Illinois, which tended to be pretty humid in summer. We ran dehumidifiers to make conditions less uncomfortable, rather than for water collection. But even then the volume of water collected – using humid air (the kind of air that resulted in rainstorms, the sort of thing you generally don’t get a whole lot of in the sort of arid regions meant to be served by the WaterSeer) and a whole lot of electricity – did not match what they’re claiming here. And an active refrigeration system using a condensible gas like ammonia is a whole lot more functional than a dirt-based heat sink. The thermal conductivity of dirt is terrible. That’s why people tend to use it as an *insulator.*
Seems if you want to condense water out of air, a dehumidifier hooked up to solar panels would be the way to go. But even then I’m not sure that that would be so useful in an arid, low-humidity region. A good water filtration system and a reliable way to access local water sources would seem a better approach.
Sigh.
Maybe we need to get rid of science, decolonize out minds, and use local magicians to call down lightningbolts. Sure, what the hell.
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Below: diagram of an evolved version. Every bit as practical as the kind described above…
