Can Making the fins hydrophobic help ? I was thinking as the water collects it gets rejected and it’s more surface area because the water does stick to the fins 😅
why is nothing that you shill marked as a advert its a advertisement you posting links as save upto advertisement you try as hard as you can to cover up the fact that all of your videos is just a shill ad for some shit but never say that its a ad
I live in in mississippi and my indoor dehumidifier pulls like 2 gallons a day out of the air. I use it to water my plants outside. Please take extreme care if you plan on drinking dehumidifier/condenser water to avoid issues with Legionnaire's disease, mold, and mildew.
one of the first modifications I would do is dewpoint tracking with arduino or some controller to only cool to just below dewpoint. don't waste energy going below dewpoint. you could either control the cycle of the compressor or the speed of the air flow.
The dewpoint is the saturation point, meaning you'd want to maximize how further below the dew point you are to get more water before the freezing point. For energy efficiency, yes, the higher the evaporator temperature, the greater the overall COP but it is not as obvious as just changing one variable in this scenario.
If you want to really optimize the efficiency, use an inverter style mini split unit. Some of those units are more than twice as efficient as portable ac units. And you would want to run the fan on an algorithm that slows it way down during low humidity, and speeds it up during high humidity. And make a simple heat exchanger that uses the otherwise wasted cool air to pre-chill the incoming warm air. You could probably improve water production 3-4 times over! I love your way of doing these projects and learning as you go though! It shows your humidity... I mean, humility!
If you are going to drink the water you made, add Himalayan salt to increase the trace mineral content of the water. Search for your filtration system you're going to use and don't forget the UV purification.
Funny thing... Submariners from all over the globe ... drink 99.99999% pure water for MONTHS at a time and do not add any "trace minerals" to the water they drink... and they dont die from drinking water that PURE! aint that funny?
I just did this yesterday for the lab. Calcium chloride rock salt, activated carbon, on a microfiber, in a colander, on a 5 gallon pail. Works wonders, and is “rechargeable”
Rick, in my shop I used an old ammonia GAS Fired refrigerator. converted heat source to solar and a 24v solar panel to run the electronics. My friend and mentor the late Dan Kramer (more degrees than a thermometer) helped me with the design/sizing of the solar heating elements. back in the day i use a 1KW UPS. this setup will use far less power than your electric AC unit and can use any heat source.
If you have a central refrigerated air system, hook a water hose to the condensation pipe with the other end going into a clean 55-gallon rated liquids drum. Elevate the drum a bit. Spend the extra for one with a spicket for easy drawing. No, that water is not free, but it's an accumulative resource that usually goes to waste. Although it doesn't seem like a lot of water, I can fill that drum on a hot Texas summer within a week.
Commercially available dehumidifiers will draw air in over the evaporator and then then exhaust the dried cold air over the condenser to cool it and improve efficiency. This is unlike traditional heat pumps, but the purpose is to extract water from the humid air, not to pump the heat from one zone to another. The criticism that I would have of most commercially available / is that, doe to there dimensions and form factors, then allow recirculation of the dried air back into the air intake to the evaporator. I think that this could be improved by ducting the exhausted air from the condenser away from the rest of the unit. It looks like this could be easily achieved with your unit that is based on the converted A/C unit.
great experiment! this validates what i have observed with my 5K window ac that i use to cool my garage. I have attached a small hose to the drain and catch the condensed water in a 5gal bucket that i use to water the pollinator flowers in my garden. Oh and the window ac is powered by solar, it uses around 450w when the compressor is running. Output of water varies depending on humidity and i now know to monitor dew point also.......cant wait for the next installment of this experiment.
literally nothing. you could buy a far less expensive dehumidifier than the components that are Frankenstein'd together here and have a much more efficient water collection. Some dehumidifiers even have a hose output option so you can easily run the output to a holding tank
buying vs repurpose I guess, water from air always will be side project and if you need AC you can simply direct water hose to a tank especially if you have a central AC water condensation is measurable
Air conditioners are dehumidifiers just with the air ducted differently. If you run them in reverse you have a heat pump that can heat your water or your house. Commercial heat pumps go forward or reverse to heat or cool. AC and dehumidifier are heat pumps optimized to do just 1 thing with the lowest purchase price. Perhaps the next video will be a solar dessicant cycle water condenser but then you wouldn't need the battery. Harder to hack from what he has, but a dessicant dehumidifier can be hacked to use solar heat directly which is almost always more efficient than making electricity first. Consumer dessicant dehumidifiers sell for around $100 USD. Better for dehumidifying cold spaces. Vapor compression devices like he's using are better for warm spaces. The original air conditioner already condensed water from air. That's why they have condensate drains. Swamp cooler added I suspect as an excuse to use tools and to show off the battery running 2 devices not just one.
This is an excellent start, but don't waste your time using the cold dry air to improve the efficiency of the heat exhaust coil. You'll only improve things perhaps 20%. Your next step should be to add an air to air heat exchanger so that the cold dry air precools the incoming warm moist air. This will improve your water yield by 3 to 4 times! Plus you won't need to control the cold temp (just stay above freezing) and you can run day or night with the nearly same efficiency. If you measure your outgoing air's temperature/humidity we can calculate the actual improvement the air to air heat exchanger will bring. Have fun!
I can additionally suggest to try using not a simple air-to-air heat exchanger, but the exchanger with air direction changed back and forward intermittently. I don’t remember exact name, but its well known idea. It seems it should be much simpler to do and more compact.
there not really different the only thing is they use a Peltier device there not as efficient as compressor based heat pumps but dont have any moving parts good for in doors for a simple way to bring down the humidity. but if you want to get as much water out of the air an AC is gonna win hands down both in efficiency and raw output assuming that AC has a good COP of 3 for every watt of energy he is using he is getting 3 watts of cooling a Peltier only gets a COP of 1 under ideal conditions some can get up to 1.5 but they cost a fair amount and from what i can see peltier's at the 1000w size a hard to come by so he would need to use multiple smaller ones.
Amazing work!! Really impressive. Cant wait till the technology develops and companies can start selling systems like this for residential water generation.
Let me save you the bother. Our 4 ton unit runs almost continuously in the southern Nevada summer and there's almost no condensate to speak of unless there's one of the rare days when we have "monsoon" like relative humidity of maybe 50%.
The great thing about using a battery to store solar energy is that you don't have to use it at the same time you collect it. The solar cells could be collecting the energy in the battery during the day. And the water collector could be running at night when the air is the most humid.
That was amazing project - using the MPPT controller in the EcoFlow for gathering solar that than produces water :) Great idea. The idea of producing water from air humidity is also worth exploring - you virtually built DIY (more powerful) version of the product that is already on the market :) Do more of these videos, they rock!
Just buy a used large dehumidifierx. Some have a drain line with pump when they are full. Can run it all the time with solar and battery so not a big deal if its efficient. You can set the humidity so it will not run when the humidity is too low and its a waste of time and energy to run it. Use the water for plants or the yard. At my home I connected the ac drainline to a soaker hose to water the grass. All Havc systems generate water that usually goes down the drain. Industrial HVAC systems produce gallons per second if humidity is high.
Hey, Great project! -Just some math about the efficiency: Water needs 2258kJ/kg to evaporate/condense, thats about 627Wh/liter (1 kg is about 1 liter). The AC-Unit produced about 1 liter 1h and used about 1200W (or less, if the compressor has not ran the whole time). The AC-Unit should also have a COP, thats greater than 1 so there is definitly potential on the efficency side. -In my opinion the Swamp-Cooler does little to nothing, because the air has already 100% relative humidity and the Swamp-Cooler tries to get 100% relative humidity. To cool the hot side with the cold air will definitely give you some efficency, but I think it won't be that much, because most of the Energy is consumed by the condensing process of the water. But I would definitly do it! -If the cooler freezes you can definitly get much more efficency if you either blow more air through the cold side or run the compressor not the whole time because you don't get that much more water out of it. With more air and a hotter cold side the AC-Unit also runs more efficient, like if the hot side is colder (higher COP, like a heatpump...) -One other thing to consider is that the copper pipe will corrode with the time because of the water and the water is like destilled water, without any minerals. I would definitly not drink it, but to shower or to water the garden it's definitly good enough. I would like to see some following videos with improved Systems!
This is so cool! We use ECO Flow for our ebike rental company and we just hooked up the solar. So cool. This water generation system is amazing! please do more
Scrap both those ideas and try a dehumidifier most come with a tank that's removable and you can catch the condensation straight from the drain pan with polytube and pipe it to a remineralization filter. Btw you can fid dehumidifier that run @600watt. Or TEC cooler with a liquid cooler for the hot side and 2 circulation fans (1 high-speed to dissipate the heat and one low speed to circulate the humid air across the cold fins. Given 60 wats per tec you can run the circ pump both fans and 3TEC's off 1 200w solar panel. You have the funding give it a shot !
Правильный способ - захолаживать теплоизолированный объем, и прокачивать через него воздух через трехступенчатый пластинчатый теплообменник на встречных потоках, их КПД > 95%, при этом вы можете использовать холод полученной воды, используя ее для охлаждения радиатора вашего теплового насоса (кондиционера), если вас устраивает теплая вода (или хранить холодную воду в термоизолированном объеме (термосе), если вы хотите использовать установку для получения холодной воды!
Really cool. Thanks! (We'd love to see more of the water series... ie. what's the least expensive way to DIY water from air... is it safe to drink (if not, what should be done to make it so), can the water be stored/shared, are there legalities that need to be considered, etc.)
Water heated (solar?) to 145+ starts to vaporize if the air pressure is slightly less than normal. Give it a surface to condense on and you have distilled water.
Fun exercise, but the physics is against you. Four thousand plus watt hours of energy is worth at least a dollar. At San Diego peak day time rates, it’s more like $2. It’s much more valuable in the battery then turning it into a few cents worth of water (that technically you aren’t supposed to directly drink without treating).
I have been collecting to condensate from my 12,000 btu air conditioner I run from solar. I use it to water my non-edible plants. I gather over 2 gallons a day.
The question would be, what are your intentions with the water? If it's for drinking I imagine you need to do a few things before you can drink it. Are you collecting it to use to flush toilets and other non consumption uses? The school where I work was built as an eco friendly school and they collect rain water and condensed water from the AC to use to flush the toilets. I don't know what else we use it for. We also use well water for the lawn sprinkler system. But couldn't you have used a standard dehumidifier and instead of capturing the water to its own internal bucket you siphon the water out into collection containers you have in your house? This way it would seem you could achieve the same goal of collecting water, avoid a lot of evaporation and use a unit that would be half of the power of those two units combined. And depending on how much water you wanted to collect you could use two dehumidifiers.
That rocking lounge chair is really triggering me :D This is a really cool project! Combined with agrivoltaics, I could see this helping to irrigate farms. I think you need more thermal mass on the cold side. Others have suggested limiting the output temperature to just below dew point, but (unless you have a variable speed compressor) turning the compressor on and off to maintain a relatively high temperature is going to kill your efficiency. If you run the compressor for a while, cooling down a big thermal mass, and then turn it off until that mass reaches just below the dew point, you can harness the cooling even while the compressor is off. A massive heat sink with a thermocouple should be all you need.
I would not expect condensation to occur on the pads that are warmer than the cooling coil. Water caught by the pads in the swamp cooler might be "carryover" (an HVAC industry term) from the cooling coil -- water droplets entrained in the air because they were blown off the cooling coil's surface by high velocity (greater than ~550 fpm?) air through the coil. Droplets collected by the pads might re-evaporate before they can drain to the bottom of the swamp cooler.
~1 gallon of water in about 4 hours, pretty nice. Gonna have to review it more. The problem with the power/mpp controller equipment is it puts wear on the battery if the load is 1500watts or higher. Victron and MPP solar equipment allows 4000-8000 watts of solar input per hour, per unit (not even in parallel with other units) and the load can be run entirely on solar or with minimal battery usage. Meaning you can run 1-3 tons of cooling or more without tapping into battery reserves or you can put your atmospheric water generation in parallel at high load, during sunlight to multiply water generation.
If u cud collect from just ABOVE a nearby water body (or just an ultrasonic humidifier ) , thats nearly 100% humidity.... straight up 6.66L OF DISTILLED WATER in 4hrs as compared to 4l only.
So, I've worked with some refrigeration systems in the past, not alot but one interesting thing Ive seen, is if the water is below the dew point temp, it can also cause moisture to come out of the air. I.E. having a tank of flowing water at 36F would slowly fill up with more water. Never experimented with it in a swamp cooler, but if you had a way of making it so the water in the sump was significantly below the dew point (enough that it was still below it before it gets back to the sump), and add an overflow drain to the sump it may be able to do help get more moisture out. (it shouldn't lose water if the water stays below the dew point at all times. ). Set a chiller in the sump, set a temp sensor at the bottom of the sump fins, turn on the pump if the water in the sump is 10 below dewpoint, and run as long as the return water is still 5 below dew point, or some values.
not trying to be glib abou tthis, but you've created a dehumidifier, I have one in my basement. And one thing I know for certain is that any plants I try to water with the water that comes out of it, and its predecessor, die; not sure why, but I know that I wouldn't drink it.
I am hoping condensation off ram pump hose from cold flowing point well will help water our plants too. It seems like there should be a super cheap method of collecting condensation off storing water underground where it's cool.
You just made it super complicated and it is not. Solar panels into a solar controller into battery bank into inverter into 5000btu window A/C unit, tip that up at a angle and catch the condensation in a water tank. Depends on the humidity but here in Oklahoma, about one to two days and you'll get around 50gal. But that's if the battery bank can run it all night too.
Since I am clear about a future water shortage, or even happen here in Northern Thailand often in April, Mai since over a year - I catch all the AirCon Water as of 2 reasons: * the water is cold - dropping into the sewers is waste of energy. let the water catch the heat from the room and then ... if you have plenty, drop it * this water is good enough for cooking, and added some minerals for drinking - better than nothing in that case
Nice little project. I would regulate the heat pump balance out chemo if you on!y need 60-50 degrees, reduce the use of the compressor. maybe look for an old ice machine with a larger freezing coil, get someone to attach it, also I would get a sheet of copper to this would help reduce any bacteria from growing.
Just "thinking out loud"... What about a rig consisting of: A small chest freezer with a control to make it a refrigerator. Inside a path of pipes for air to flow & condensed water to run out. Outside the freezer a heat exchange set up, so incoming new air is pre-chilled by the exhaust "dried" air.
So, since you're doing this- stick a stirling engine between the hot and cold side (After the coolant comes Out of the cold side, before it goes back to the compressor- importantly After it's done the swamp cooler thing.) to scavange power from the temperature differential. Might be enough to run the fan, improving efficiency. Do you see what I'm pointing at?
Cool project. But energy/economy wise not very efficient. If I deliver energy to the grid I get €0,30 cents per 1000w. 1000w per hour for half a liter of water would cost €0,60. Water from the utility costs me about €1,50 per 1000l.
Great experimental setup, with an equally great result. I wonder, however, whether something like this makes sense if it were to be done in millions of households! Water is thus extracted from the ambient air, which has an influence on this ambient air and could heat it up additionally. It could prevent or at least reduce such cloud formation over land. The opposite of what you should do about climate change.
I don't get your reasoning behind using a swamp cooler, like running it in reverse should condense instead of evaporate water lol! The wiking pads don't have good thermal conductivity which is what you need to get condensation, honestly i don't know how much you can improve it because the radiator is doing most of the heavy lifting so i doubt the air has much moisture left but one simple thing you could do is to grab two square sheet metal, put the cold air through a hole in the middle of one and place them very close to each other so as to sandwich the exiting air, this adds surface area, slows down the air to "absorb" more cold and also takes advantage of the outside air which still has moisture. Then add some gutters to collect the water in a bottle or something.
Hook the hot side to DHW and chill it while making warm water. If you tied it to an earth loop and variable speed geothermal heat pump as the engine to produce water. So many modes and thermal interfaces to consider.
Many N.American dehumidifiers use lead and other heavy metals especially in the solder. Aluminum is dissolved to a tiny degree. So, wareribg non edible house plants is likely fine, but that soil will accumulate metals. Europe has the RoHS standard and you can get dehumidifiers where the qater doesn't contain heavy metals and can be simply treated for bacteria (ceramic filter like Berkey). Anyone found a N. American dehumidifer with no heavy metals in condensate? Might even conform to RoHS. Another option is the dessicant dehumidifier. My N.American model condenses in a plastic heat exchanger. It should be safe, but i haven't sent out water tests. And it produces much less water per kwH.
Several months ago I wrote you in the comments section that in North County San Diego a typical 3 Ton A/C system can produce about 15 gallons of clean fresh water every 24 hours (these are very conservative numbers). If we truly want to solve our water problem in California, all we have to do is harness all the A/C condensate and we would be done. As it is in most cases, it goes down the sewer (mine waters my organic apple trees).
@@draconightwalker4964 Yes. However, it would be very easy to make it drinkable. My point is all that water is wasted every day and every night the A/C is on. Mine is diverted and waters my organic apples.
did you happen to see how much water you recovered without the swamp cooler in the circuit? IT would also be interesting to see what the RH of the air is after the fan ie the cold air. It looks like you've (re?)discovered the "dehumidifier"
Its like the skywalker moisture farm on tattooine. BTW I have a $140 dehumidifier that pull about a quart of water an hour into a collection bucket. Its not complicated
Send the cold air into a building that needs it, find a way to purify the water for drinking, and try to find a way to send that heat off into space rather than just back into the atmosphere. :3
Wish my new 800watt(!) Midia dehumidifier did more than 1 pint per hr at my Tacoma WA location. Barometer showed 50% R.H. Hmmm?? Good surounding area circulation too. They claim up to 50 pints per day, thats roughly TWO pints an hr. Must need more humudity I guess. On to adding good filter & a UV-C LED string at filter AND container(!)
You should interview Moses west with the Moses west foundation. He produces some of the biggest atmospheric water generators. Some supply water for whole houses. Some give people in places like flint Michigan clean drinking water. Should check him out.
I would be interested in investigating a system that could take the water out of the air coming it into the house; store the water; and irradiate the heat to space using special roof panels. This way, you have a shelter when wet bulb temperature difference goes to zero (where the human body can't cool itself); a water supply; and the possibility of sending the heat into space instead of contributing the global warming (which could boil the oceans in 400 years time, even without the CO2)
In my opinion, there will be better: 1) If ambient air pass through the evaporator part it cools down and loses some moisture there on it. 2) Then cooled air passes through the condenser's part, recapturing cool air helps to cool the condenser more quickly, which means less energy. This is how the clothes tumble dryer with compressor works by this principle
Reminds me of the Steven Wright piece. "I got a de-humidifier for my birthday; I also got a humidifier...... I just put the two of 'em in a room and let them fight it out."
Awesome output Ricky n friends! 1 liter an hour is more impressive than a certain $30k "hydro panel" we know of! ive been contemplating a setup like this as well so i can run it continuously with waste power during the day and with minimal power at night when the dew point is typically best. (also wont freeze) unlike those hydro panels
Is it possible you are over killing the cold side? Less cold would still work and draw less power. Another thought is, what if this was buried where the underground temp is closer to 68 degrees.
Wouldn’t efficiency be optimized by accumulating watthours from panels during the day and running the (effective) dehumidifier during the night when the cooler air humidity is naturally closer to the dewpoint?
You need a heat exchanger off the compress hot side and create hot water for free while increasing the efficiency!!! I know because I've been doing it for almost 30 years 😆
Lol I like the video, but with respect you're in what; 100f temperature high humidity area. All you probably need to have is dig a hole and bin liner to collect water like they do on survival hacks, it will be drinkable too. On a positive note, to make the water drinkable you can plug in a kettle to boil it or run an RO pump.
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Why not also condense the hot air by bringing it below temp to get even more water ? By forcing the hot air over water?
Can Making the fins hydrophobic help ? I was thinking as the water collects it gets rejected and it’s more surface area because the water does stick to the fins 😅
YOU DONT NEED TO CAPITALIZE ANY WORDS IN THE TITLE. IT IS ANNOYING
How is this different from a dehumidifier?
why is nothing that you shill marked as a advert its a advertisement you posting links as save upto advertisement
you try as hard as you can to cover up the fact that all of your videos is just a shill ad for some shit but never say that its a ad
I live in in mississippi and my indoor dehumidifier pulls like 2 gallons a day out of the air. I use it to water my plants outside. Please take extreme care if you plan on drinking dehumidifier/condenser water to avoid issues with Legionnaire's disease, mold, and mildew.
one of the first modifications I would do is dewpoint tracking with arduino or some controller to only cool to just below dewpoint. don't waste energy going below dewpoint. you could either control the cycle of the compressor or the speed of the air flow.
oh I love that! brilliant!
The dewpoint is the saturation point, meaning you'd want to maximize how further below the dew point you are to get more water before the freezing point. For energy efficiency, yes, the higher the evaporator temperature, the greater the overall COP but it is not as obvious as just changing one variable in this scenario.
@@Southghost5997 yes it would take a bit to properly track but with simple programming you could monitor yeild vs humidity vs energy used.
$240 later I only getting a pint per hour from Chinese 800!watt dehumidifier in Tacoma WA. w 50% rel.humid. Hmmm???
If you want to really optimize the efficiency, use an inverter style mini split unit. Some of those units are more than twice as efficient as portable ac units. And you would want to run the fan on an algorithm that slows it way down during low humidity, and speeds it up during high humidity. And make a simple heat exchanger that uses the otherwise wasted cool air to pre-chill the incoming warm air. You could probably improve water production 3-4 times over! I love your way of doing these projects and learning as you go though! It shows your humidity... I mean, humility!
If you are going to drink the water you made, add Himalayan salt to increase the trace mineral content of the water. Search for your filtration system you're going to use and don't forget the UV purification.
Funny thing... Submariners from all over the globe ... drink 99.99999% pure water for MONTHS at a time and do not add any "trace minerals" to the water they drink... and they dont die from drinking water that PURE! aint that funny?
better don't drink that at all. 😐
I just did this yesterday for the lab. Calcium chloride rock salt, activated carbon, on a microfiber, in a colander, on a 5 gallon pail. Works wonders, and is “rechargeable”
You made a dehumidifier. Nice.
Rick, in my shop I used an old ammonia GAS Fired refrigerator. converted heat source to solar and a 24v solar panel to run the electronics. My friend and mentor the late Dan Kramer (more degrees than a thermometer) helped me with the design/sizing of the solar heating elements. back in the day i use a 1KW UPS. this setup will use far less power than your electric AC unit and can use any heat source.
If you have a central refrigerated air system, hook a water hose to the condensation pipe with the other end going into a clean 55-gallon rated liquids drum. Elevate the drum a bit. Spend the extra for one with a spicket for easy drawing. No, that water is not free, but it's an accumulative resource that usually goes to waste. Although it doesn't seem like a lot of water, I can fill that drum on a hot Texas summer within a week.
2 days where I live. My understanding is the water isnt good to drink. Also wonder if there is lead in the solder?
Commercially available dehumidifiers will draw air in over the evaporator and then then exhaust the dried cold air over the condenser to cool it and improve efficiency. This is unlike traditional heat pumps, but the purpose is to extract water from the humid air, not to pump the heat from one zone to another. The criticism that I would have of most commercially available / is that, doe to there dimensions and form factors, then allow recirculation of the dried air back into the air intake to the evaporator. I think that this could be improved by ducting the exhausted air from the condenser away from the rest of the unit. It looks like this could be easily achieved with your unit that is based on the converted A/C unit.
yeah this is going to be phase two!
great experiment! this validates what i have observed with my 5K window ac that i use to cool my garage. I have attached a small hose to the drain and catch the condensed water in a 5gal bucket that i use to water the pollinator flowers in my garden. Oh and the window ac is powered by solar, it uses around 450w when the compressor is running. Output of water varies depending on humidity and i now know to monitor dew point also.......cant wait for the next installment of this experiment.
what's the difference between your experiment and a dehumidifier? thank you
literally nothing. you could buy a far less expensive dehumidifier than the components that are Frankenstein'd together here and have a much more efficient water collection. Some dehumidifiers even have a hose output option so you can easily run the output to a holding tank
buying vs repurpose I guess, water from air always will be side project and if you need AC you can simply direct water hose to a tank especially if you have a central AC water condensation is measurable
Buy, buy, buy…solves everything and takes little imagination.
What was that guy’s name in the movie “MOSQUITO COAST”?
@tech5298 ok smart guy, what do you do if you don't have a massive swamp cooler, air conditioner, battery unit and solar panels
Air conditioners are dehumidifiers just with the air ducted differently. If you run them in reverse you have a heat pump that can heat your water or your house. Commercial heat pumps go forward or reverse to heat or cool. AC and dehumidifier are heat pumps optimized to do just 1 thing with the lowest purchase price.
Perhaps the next video will be a solar dessicant cycle water condenser but then you wouldn't need the battery. Harder to hack from what he has, but a dessicant dehumidifier can be hacked to use solar heat directly which is almost always more efficient than making electricity first.
Consumer dessicant dehumidifiers sell for around $100 USD. Better for dehumidifying cold spaces. Vapor compression devices like he's using are better for warm spaces.
The original air conditioner already condensed water from air. That's why they have condensate drains. Swamp cooler added I suspect as an excuse to use tools and to show off the battery running 2 devices not just one.
Most coils have coatings that resist mildew and mold and such. Be very, very careful in doing this
We don't want him getting legionnaire's disease!
This is an excellent start, but don't waste your time using the cold dry air to improve the efficiency of the heat exhaust coil. You'll only improve things perhaps 20%. Your next step should be to add an air to air heat exchanger so that the cold dry air precools the incoming warm moist air. This will improve your water yield by 3 to 4 times! Plus you won't need to control the cold temp (just stay above freezing) and you can run day or night with the nearly same efficiency. If you measure your outgoing air's temperature/humidity we can calculate the actual improvement the air to air heat exchanger will bring. Have fun!
I can additionally suggest to try using not a simple air-to-air heat exchanger, but the exchanger with air direction changed back and forward intermittently. I don’t remember exact name, but its well known idea. It seems it should be much simpler to do and more compact.
@@NikitaKrjukov Do you mean a cross heat exchanger?
@@Synus5001 I think he's referring to a regenerator, which doesn't seem to apply since it mixes the incoming and outgoing streams.
Wouldn't a dehumidifier be more efficient? Thank you for all you are doing.
probably but he repurpose stuff in the garage doing nothing but collecting dust
there not really different the only thing is they use a Peltier device there not as efficient as compressor based heat pumps but dont have any moving parts good for in doors for a simple way to bring down the humidity. but if you want to get as much water out of the air an AC is gonna win hands down both in efficiency and raw output assuming that AC has a good COP of 3 for every watt of energy he is using he is getting 3 watts of cooling a Peltier only gets a COP of 1 under ideal conditions some can get up to 1.5 but they cost a fair amount and from what i can see peltier's at the 1000w size a hard to come by so he would need to use multiple smaller ones.
Amazing work!! Really impressive. Cant wait till the technology develops and companies can start selling systems like this for residential water generation.
That's a lot of work just to have a dehumidifier
Desert conditions would be awesome to see. Thanks for the video.
Let me save you the bother. Our 4 ton unit runs almost continuously in the southern Nevada summer and there's almost no condensate to speak of unless there's one of the rare days when we have "monsoon" like relative humidity of maybe 50%.
why not just use a dehumidifier?
Not about the end, it's about learning through the journey
@@Sentrme I live in the desert, its about the end...
That's what a dehumidifier is.
A heatpump that circulates air and catches condensation.
@@MauroTamm …and blows the cold air over the hot coil to gain better efficiency.
Just what I thought.
The great thing about using a battery to store solar energy is that you don't have to use it at the same time you collect it. The solar cells could be collecting the energy in the battery during the day. And the water collector could be running at night when the air is the most humid.
That was amazing project - using the MPPT controller in the EcoFlow for gathering solar that than produces water :) Great idea. The idea of producing water from air humidity is also worth exploring - you virtually built DIY (more powerful) version of the product that is already on the market :)
Do more of these videos, they rock!
Just buy a used large dehumidifierx. Some have a drain line with pump when they are full. Can run it all the time with solar and battery so not a big deal if its efficient. You can set the humidity so it will not run when the humidity is too low and its a waste of time and energy to run it. Use the water for plants or the yard.
At my home I connected the ac drainline to a soaker hose to water the grass. All Havc systems generate water that usually goes down the drain. Industrial HVAC systems produce gallons per second if humidity is high.
Hey, Great project!
-Just some math about the efficiency: Water needs 2258kJ/kg to evaporate/condense, thats about 627Wh/liter (1 kg is about 1 liter). The AC-Unit produced about 1 liter 1h and used about 1200W (or less, if the compressor has not ran the whole time). The AC-Unit should also have a COP, thats greater than 1 so there is definitly potential on the efficency side.
-In my opinion the Swamp-Cooler does little to nothing, because the air has already 100% relative humidity and the Swamp-Cooler tries to get 100% relative humidity. To cool the hot side with the cold air will definitely give you some efficency, but I think it won't be that much, because most of the Energy is consumed by the condensing process of the water. But I would definitly do it!
-If the cooler freezes you can definitly get much more efficency if you either blow more air through the cold side or run the compressor not the whole time because you don't get that much more water out of it. With more air and a hotter cold side the AC-Unit also runs more efficient, like if the hot side is colder (higher COP, like a heatpump...)
-One other thing to consider is that the copper pipe will corrode with the time because of the water and the water is like destilled water, without any minerals. I would definitly not drink it, but to shower or to water the garden it's definitly good enough.
I would like to see some following videos with improved Systems!
See this is why i watch this channel. Not for the outrage but actually cool science ideas.
You could also put the EcoFlow in front of the cold air to help reduce it's usage (a little bit) as well :)
This is so cool!
We use ECO Flow for our ebike rental company and we just hooked up the solar. So cool. This water generation system is amazing! please do more
You going to correct the typo in the title?
I use the output from my commercial R410 dehumidifier to produce distilled water.
Scrap both those ideas and try a dehumidifier most come with a tank that's removable and you can catch the condensation straight from the drain pan with polytube and pipe it to a remineralization filter. Btw you can fid dehumidifier that run @600watt. Or TEC cooler with a liquid cooler for the hot side and 2 circulation fans (1 high-speed to dissipate the heat and one low speed to circulate the humid air across the cold fins. Given 60 wats per tec you can run the circ pump both fans and 3TEC's off 1 200w solar panel. You have the funding give it a shot !
We need to revisit this side project! I’ve been patiently waiting for a second video!
Nice good job
Правильный способ - захолаживать теплоизолированный объем, и прокачивать через него воздух через трехступенчатый пластинчатый теплообменник на встречных потоках, их КПД > 95%, при этом вы можете использовать холод полученной воды, используя ее для охлаждения радиатора вашего теплового насоса (кондиционера), если вас устраивает теплая вода (или хранить холодную воду в термоизолированном объеме (термосе), если вы хотите использовать установку для получения холодной воды!
So this is just a ecoflow commercial making a dehumidifier. Looks like you built a Rube Goldberg machine.
lol😄
Really cool. Thanks! (We'd love to see more of the water series... ie. what's the least expensive way to DIY water from air... is it safe to drink (if not, what should be done to make it so), can the water be stored/shared, are there legalities that need to be considered, etc.)
Such a cool project! Your picnic video really sold this battery/charging system
Water heated (solar?) to 145+ starts to vaporize if the air pressure is slightly less than normal. Give it a surface to condense on and you have distilled water.
That would be good for purifying water, here this issue is pulling it out of the air... In this case he reinvented the dehumidifier
This is pretty cool! Keep iterating!
No electric bill, no water bill, no driving hassle (because of FSD)..man a better world is coming!!!
Fun exercise, but the physics is against you.
Four thousand plus watt hours of energy is worth at least a dollar. At San Diego peak day time rates, it’s more like $2.
It’s much more valuable in the battery then turning it into a few cents worth of water (that technically you aren’t supposed to directly drink without treating).
I have been collecting to condensate from my 12,000 btu air conditioner I run from solar. I use it to water my non-edible plants. I gather over 2 gallons a day.
The question would be, what are your intentions with the water? If it's for drinking I imagine you need to do a few things before you can drink it. Are you collecting it to use to flush toilets and other non consumption uses? The school where I work was built as an eco friendly school and they collect rain water and condensed water from the AC to use to flush the toilets. I don't know what else we use it for. We also use well water for the lawn sprinkler system.
But couldn't you have used a standard dehumidifier and instead of capturing the water to its own internal bucket you siphon the water out into collection containers you have in your house? This way it would seem you could achieve the same goal of collecting water, avoid a lot of evaporation and use a unit that would be half of the power of those two units combined. And depending on how much water you wanted to collect you could use two dehumidifiers.
Good questions and right conclusions!
1 ton mini split produces 10 gal + of distilled water a day
That rocking lounge chair is really triggering me :D
This is a really cool project! Combined with agrivoltaics, I could see this helping to irrigate farms.
I think you need more thermal mass on the cold side. Others have suggested limiting the output temperature to just below dew point, but (unless you have a variable speed compressor) turning the compressor on and off to maintain a relatively high temperature is going to kill your efficiency. If you run the compressor for a while, cooling down a big thermal mass, and then turn it off until that mass reaches just below the dew point, you can harness the cooling even while the compressor is off.
A massive heat sink with a thermocouple should be all you need.
You should Search the Warka Tower it harvests humidity without electricity it's designed by a French Architectural Firm
I would not expect condensation to occur on the pads that are warmer than the cooling coil. Water caught by the pads in the swamp cooler might be "carryover" (an HVAC industry term) from the cooling coil -- water droplets entrained in the air because they were blown off the cooling coil's surface by high velocity (greater than ~550 fpm?) air through the coil. Droplets collected by the pads might re-evaporate before they can drain to the bottom of the swamp cooler.
A Sietch. Awesome.
~1 gallon of water in about 4 hours, pretty nice. Gonna have to review it more.
The problem with the power/mpp controller equipment is it puts wear on the battery if the load is 1500watts or higher.
Victron and MPP solar equipment allows 4000-8000 watts of solar input per hour, per unit (not even in parallel with other units) and the load can be run entirely on solar or with minimal battery usage.
Meaning you can run 1-3 tons of cooling or more without tapping into battery reserves or you can put your atmospheric water generation in parallel at high load, during sunlight to multiply water generation.
If u cud collect from just ABOVE a nearby water body (or just an ultrasonic humidifier ) , thats nearly 100% humidity....
straight up 6.66L OF DISTILLED WATER in 4hrs as compared to 4l only.
Excellent video, hope to see more in this direction and definitely looking forward to an ongoing series
So, I've worked with some refrigeration systems in the past, not alot but one interesting thing Ive seen, is if the water is below the dew point temp, it can also cause moisture to come out of the air. I.E. having a tank of flowing water at 36F would slowly fill up with more water. Never experimented with it in a swamp cooler, but if you had a way of making it so the water in the sump was significantly below the dew point (enough that it was still below it before it gets back to the sump), and add an overflow drain to the sump it may be able to do help get more moisture out. (it shouldn't lose water if the water stays below the dew point at all times. ). Set a chiller in the sump, set a temp sensor at the bottom of the sump fins, turn on the pump if the water in the sump is 10 below dewpoint, and run as long as the return water is still 5 below dew point, or some values.
not trying to be glib abou tthis, but you've created a dehumidifier, I have one in my basement. And one thing I know for certain is that any plants I try to water with the water that comes out of it, and its predecessor, die; not sure why, but I know that I wouldn't drink it.
Nice to watch the creativity, inventiveness , and experimentation. Nice ! ☝️☝️✍❤
Your 'hot' side' would probably be more than enough to also heat your HOT water supply.
Just add an insulated tank and and a circulation pump.
I am hoping condensation off ram pump hose from cold flowing point well will help water our plants too. It seems like there should be a super cheap method of collecting condensation off storing water underground where it's cool.
You just made it super complicated and it is not. Solar panels into a solar controller into battery bank into inverter into 5000btu window A/C unit, tip that up at a angle and catch the condensation in a water tank.
Depends on the humidity but here in Oklahoma, about one to two days and you'll get around 50gal.
But that's if the battery bank can run it all night too.
Since I am clear about a future water shortage, or even happen here in Northern Thailand often in April, Mai since over a year - I catch all the AirCon Water as of 2 reasons:
* the water is cold - dropping into the sewers is waste of energy. let the water catch the heat from the room and then ... if you have plenty, drop it
* this water is good enough for cooking, and added some minerals for drinking - better than nothing in that case
Love it! I have all of those components so I have another way to collect water.
cool right? So this was totally inspired by stuff I had in my shed... but I have a few ideas on how I can make this even better! future videos!
@@TwoBitDaVinciHow about a fridge with its door open? Then you attach a larger container to the drainage hose of the fridge.
@@wilberdebeer4696 it could work but a fridge isn't as a powerful they normally only have around 500-600 watts of cooling power.
Nice little project. I would regulate the heat pump balance out chemo if you on!y need 60-50 degrees, reduce the use of the compressor. maybe look for an old ice machine with a larger freezing coil, get someone to attach it, also I would get a sheet of copper to this would help reduce any bacteria from growing.
Just "thinking out loud"... What about a rig consisting of: A small chest freezer with a control to make it a refrigerator. Inside a path of pipes for air to flow & condensed water to run out. Outside the freezer a heat exchange set up, so incoming new air is pre-chilled by the exhaust "dried" air.
So, since you're doing this- stick a stirling engine between the hot and cold side (After the coolant comes Out of the cold side, before it goes back to the compressor- importantly After it's done the swamp cooler thing.) to scavange power from the temperature differential. Might be enough to run the fan, improving efficiency.
Do you see what I'm pointing at?
This water is pretty much distilled water. It’s a good start but how do we turn-it into actually drinkable and/or water that will not kill plants.
Pretty cool stuff. Thanks!
Perhaps the next project could be a portable water filtration system
Cool project. But energy/economy wise not very efficient. If I deliver energy to the grid I get €0,30 cents per 1000w. 1000w per hour for half a liter of water would cost €0,60. Water from the utility costs me about €1,50 per 1000l.
AIRCONDITIONER + WATER IN ONE
GOODJOB!!
This is just a standard dehumidifier with extra steps.
Great experimental setup, with an equally great result. I wonder, however, whether something like this makes sense if it were to be done in millions of households! Water is thus extracted from the ambient air, which has an influence on this ambient air and could heat it up additionally. It could prevent or at least reduce such cloud formation over land. The opposite of what you should do about climate change.
cool project with what you had on hand but couldn't you have just used a standard Honeywell home dehumidifier?
the point isto repurpose some old equipment, not buying. :)
I don't get your reasoning behind using a swamp cooler, like running it in reverse should condense instead of evaporate water lol! The wiking pads don't have good thermal conductivity which is what you need to get condensation, honestly i don't know how much you can improve it because the radiator is doing most of the heavy lifting so i doubt the air has much moisture left but one simple thing you could do is to grab two square sheet metal, put the cold air through a hole in the middle of one and place them very close to each other so as to sandwich the exiting air, this adds surface area, slows down the air to "absorb" more cold and also takes advantage of the outside air which still has moisture. Then add some gutters to collect the water in a bottle or something.
Air from water would be interesting
Just plug it in backwards.
Hook the hot side to DHW and chill it while making warm water. If you tied it to an earth loop and variable speed geothermal heat pump as the engine to produce water. So many modes and thermal interfaces to consider.
Hey Ricky, I am still waiting for your content on OTEC [Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion].
Swamp cooler? Is that evaporative cooling?
Many N.American dehumidifiers use lead and other heavy metals especially in the solder. Aluminum is dissolved to a tiny degree. So, wareribg non edible house plants is likely fine, but that soil will accumulate metals.
Europe has the RoHS standard and you can get dehumidifiers where the qater doesn't contain heavy metals and can be simply treated for bacteria (ceramic filter like Berkey). Anyone found a N. American dehumidifer with no heavy metals in condensate? Might even conform to RoHS.
Another option is the dessicant dehumidifier. My N.American model condenses in a plastic heat exchanger. It should be safe, but i haven't sent out water tests. And it produces much less water per kwH.
Several months ago I wrote you in the comments section that in North County San Diego a typical 3 Ton A/C system can produce about 15 gallons of clean fresh water every 24 hours (these are very conservative numbers). If we truly want to solve our water problem in California, all we have to do is harness all the A/C condensate and we would be done. As it is in most cases, it goes down the sewer (mine waters my organic apple trees).
its not technically good enough for humans to drink. water plants, flush the toilet, fine.
@@draconightwalker4964 Yes. However, it would be very easy to make it drinkable. My point is all that water is wasted every day and every night the A/C is on. Mine is diverted and waters my organic apples.
did you happen to see how much water you recovered without the swamp cooler in the circuit? IT would also be interesting to see what the RH of the air is after the fan ie the cold air. It looks like you've (re?)discovered the "dehumidifier"
Its like the skywalker moisture farm on tattooine. BTW I have a $140 dehumidifier that pull about a quart of water an hour into a collection bucket. Its not complicated
It would be a pain to pipe it, but you could use the cool dry air being exhausted from the reversed swamp cooler to help cool the hot side.
Send the cold air into a building that needs it, find a way to purify the water for drinking, and try to find a way to send that heat off into space rather than just back into the atmosphere. :3
Why would you send it into space? Why not simply try to put it into a water heater or broiler?
Wish my new 800watt(!) Midia dehumidifier did more than 1 pint per hr at my Tacoma WA location. Barometer showed 50% R.H. Hmmm?? Good surounding area circulation too. They claim up to 50 pints per day, thats roughly TWO pints an hr. Must need more humudity I guess. On to adding good filter & a UV-C LED string at filter AND container(!)
Interesting , Thank You
You should interview Moses west with the Moses west foundation. He produces some of the biggest atmospheric water generators. Some supply water for whole houses. Some give people in places like flint Michigan clean drinking water. Should check him out.
That was so frick'n cool!
I would be interested in investigating a system that could take the water out of the air coming it into the house; store the water; and irradiate the heat to space using special roof panels. This way, you have a shelter when wet bulb temperature difference goes to zero (where the human body can't cool itself); a water supply; and the possibility of sending the heat into space instead of contributing the global warming (which could boil the oceans in 400 years time, even without the CO2)
In my opinion, there will be better:
1) If ambient air pass through the evaporator part it cools down and loses some moisture there on it.
2) Then cooled air passes through the condenser's part, recapturing cool air helps to cool the condenser more quickly, which means less energy. This is how the clothes tumble dryer with compressor works by this principle
Reminds me of the Steven Wright piece. "I got a de-humidifier for my birthday; I also got a humidifier...... I just put the two of 'em in a room and let them fight it out."
" I put instant coffee in the microwave... it actually went back in time." SW
Awesome output Ricky n friends! 1 liter an hour is more impressive than a certain $30k "hydro panel" we know of! ive been contemplating a setup like this as well so i can run it continuously with waste power during the day and with minimal power at night when the dew point is typically best. (also wont freeze) unlike those hydro panels
great experiment!
i wold like to see how far you can take this, optimized and running all day i would bet you can get over 10 liters
Is it possible you are over killing the cold side? Less cold would still work and draw less power. Another thought is, what if this was buried where the underground temp is closer to 68 degrees.
How much condensation is collected in the stock configuration before modification?
what is a dehumidifier? we had one at my parents house in the damp basement. dumped a gallon of water out of it everyday.
Very cool project. Ciao, Marco.
You should build something and make it available to the farmers in the southwest being hit by the water shortage.
Interesting exercise 🤔
Wouldn’t efficiency be optimized by accumulating watthours from panels during the day and running the (effective) dehumidifier during the night when the cooler air humidity is naturally closer to the dewpoint?
You need a heat exchanger off the compress hot side and create hot water for free while increasing the efficiency!!!
I know because I've been doing it for almost 30 years 😆
Lol I like the video, but with respect you're in what; 100f temperature high humidity area. All you probably need to have is dig a hole and bin liner to collect water like they do on survival hacks, it will be drinkable too.
On a positive note, to make the water drinkable you can plug in a kettle to boil it or run an RO pump.
Good job.
early prediction? the material of the plates isn’t a good enough conductor of temp to create enough temp differential.