2 Breakthroughs That Could Solve the Fresh Water Crisis
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ก.ย. 2022
- Exploring 2 recent desalination and fresh water breakthroughs. Get a LARQ PureVis pitcher and start enjoying fresh, pure water today: bylarq.com/undecided. These two new breakthroughs in water desalination and fresh water production show us where the technology may be heading, especially for more targeted applications. One of the advances gets fresh water at the push of a button WITHOUT filters, and the other can pull water out of the air without a power source, even in the middle of a desert. A large scale desalination plant isn't a one size fits all solution. Are these small scale advances worth the hype, and what role can they play in the freshwater crisis? Let’s take a deeper look.
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Do you think technologies like these, even if they’re more targeted solutions, have a place to make a difference? Get a LARQ PureVis pitcher and start enjoying fresh, pure water today: bylarq.com/undecided.
If you liked this video, check out: How Nanotech Can Help Solve the Fresh Water Crisis th-cam.com/video/D1kqGyPGsF8/w-d-xo.html
The podcast needs to be longer🥺
Wonder how long it'll be before this too is busted and debunked as it's clear from the title whatever this is it's another scam that was poorly researched. Bummer, used to respect this channel but it's time to unsub and go.
Israel already done it, upon completion of the seventh desalinated plant, desalinated water will cover up to 90% of Israel's annual municipal and industrial water consumption. The real question is how motivated, tax rich and aware of the problem the local goverments are. But the ICP+ED may the game changer. Gel ... no life span information means it is probaly a sigle use item ... also freeze-drying is one of the most expensive and most energy intensive processes.
How about mold within the gel?
Is anyone desalinating water via ice? how feasible is it at an industrial scale?
This is a great example how an invention doesn't have to solve the whole problem at once. We just need a lot of inventions that solve a smaller problem and things are looking much brighter.
But then some genius exec will not want to move on it unless "it can save the world all by itself" We need to push to keep that from happening. That and the inevitable lawsuit by "do-gooders" who will sue precisely because it does not save the world by itself. This is one of those things where it is okay to cry out "This is good enough".
ya wheel as an inventor i combine things like geo-thermal and hugo culture to supply 10-20% of a houses heating and air conditioning for 2-3 thousand and you get it for 20-50 years and no fertilizing or watering and food or flowers also and carbon sequestering too. but don't have millions to billions to get it going so nothing but a waste thinking how to help our environment as no financial help for my idea's. so thanks billionaires.
Please report this video for misinformation
Well that's the thing isn't it. Inventions won't save us, they are tools in the toolbox. Policy will save us.
Except it's old technology which has already been busted as not workable.
I honestly think that powerless option would be amazing for regions hit by natural disasters (floods, hurricanes) where the local water system has been compromised, and may take weeks to get back online. Having a few dozen shipping containers setup in a way to produce semi-large volumes of refillable drinkable water would be literally a life saver.
I agree with you, the poor folks in Pakistan are surrounded by water they can't drink while other parts of the world are in drought. Alas this situation is only going to get worse.
While good in theory there's a reason the gel option didn't show someone drinking from the prototype.
@@markquintonii the guy did drink it 09:40
The issue with the gel is you need a freezee dryer its not powerless in the slightest
there is no powerless option. Any process needs energy, and that needs to come from somewhere.
Dude the Larq is lit AF 🔥. I love your show! I think you do a really good job doing in-depth coverage of complex issues while keeping it within the grasps of a layman or novice! You are one of the only channels covering the issues i care about in an educated manner that i feels is beyond professional.Thank you!!!
What tends to be forgotten, is the usefulness of the brine and other things removed from water. Salt is used all over, from food to roads and other industrial purposes. At larger scale, these will be easier to get and use elsewhere. For instance, the ocean is one of the largest containers for lithium. There's also a lot of other things in seawater that are useful. Many of them are put there by us. The byproducts of many processes, I feel, should be researched more to see what can be more reclaimed and cleaner than just dumping in random places.
the brine could be processed and be used for molten salt thermal batteries.
Salt has low commercial value. Hence high shipping costs limits the commercial value.
Brine is still majority water. Water content is still 93% for those brine. It is not pure salt yet. Still very high cost in processing.
@@zlmdragon. if too much brine, the marine echo system is also at risk of destabilizing...
@@zlmdragon. please can you elaborate more ?
It's less costly, apparently, to process sewage treatment water to drinking quality water again.
I’ve heard the claims about the gels. They seem incredible (that is, unbelievable). Six liters per day? How much water is actually in the air to be harvested? What would be the environmental impact of stripping that water from the air? What happens when every home in a village or city sets up their own air-based water extractor? Will the citizens downwind have anything to drink? Will plants and trees in the area be able to survive their even more arid environment? What about wild animals? And so on.
Air can hold a percentage of it's weight in water vapor, and based on readily available data, air at 100% humidity, that is the absolute most it can hold (a.k.a. a cloud), at tropical temperatures of 90 degrees F can hold about 3% of its weight in water vapor. This would mean that in order to collect 6 liters of water in a day, you would have to force 200 L of an actual cloud through the membrane. Believable for a long fence running along a hill with a prevailing wind that runs uphill, and 6 liters of water can make a surprising difference in regenerative agriculture, but nowhere near the absolute bonkers claims here
@@TheWhiteDragon3 Thank you. That makes much more sense.
@@TheWhiteDragon3 I get more than six liters from my home AC system on a typical midwest summer day.
@@UncleKennysPlace : yes, it’s an untapped resource in extremely dry areas like where I live. I have often thought it should at the very least be rerouted for drip irrigation in a few plant beds.
The water cycle is a very interesting thing - as is the capacity of air to hold water and why and when water is taken up as evaporation over bodies of water such as seas and lakes and eventually released as rain. Just because it isn’t raining doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot of water in the air - also the process of breathing for animals and transpiring for plants continually puts water back into the atmosphere. Anyway wind moves over a body of water it picks it up and then may or may not drop it somewhere else. As long as there is moving wind there is water being added into the atmosphere from multiple sources. It would take a HUGE amount of extraction to fundamentally change the water content of the air in a given place - not impossible - but on a scale it is hard to imagine.
I love your videos but the frequent conflation of power and energy is confusing. Energy is power applied over time. Joule (J) is the standard unit of energy and Watt (W) is the standard unit of power. A watt is defined as joules per second, i.e W=J/s. Other customary units for energy include (kilo) watt hours, i.e. how many joules is consumed by one watt over one hour. For example: 1 kilowatt hour = 1000W*3600s= 3.6 MJ of energy. When your say it takes 20 W to purify 1L of water this doesn't make sense without the time it takes to purify the 1L water. Did you mean 20 Joules per liter? 20 Watt hours? Or 20 KWh per liter? These are all widely different values and it's not clear which one you actually meant. Please, could you be more careful with units of energy so we can better understand the thing you're talking about?
Indeed, 20 W/l is nonsensical.
But the rate of production is 0.3 l/h
So I assumed the device would work roughly 3 hours to produce 1 liter, while using 20 Watt of power.
Or in short: it's a 20W device, lol.
Exactly this! FFS, how hard can it be to get this right in a so-called "science"-channel? 20 Watts/Liter is absolute nonsense! Grrr!
Thank you for writing this out. I was looking for a response like this.
I was almost starting to doubt myself whether I didn't understand power use myself.
Matt really needs to correct this mistake or end up turning into a meaningless technobabble channel.
The unit we're looking for is J/l (Joule per liter).
Let's assume the device uses 20W during operation.
0.3 l/h = 8.33 10^-5 l/s
20 W = 20 J/s
The energy requirement per liter is:
20 / 8.33 10^-5 = 240 kJ/l
@@Buzz_Purr Most people are probably more accustomed to Ws or Wh or kWh as units for energy, especially for electric energy. So your 240 kJ/l translate to roughly 67 Wh/l. This means about 67 kWh for a cubic meter of water. Compare this to reverse osmosis plants, which use around 3 kWh for a cubic meter of water. And you see that this method is highly inefficient compared to reverse osmosis. Of course it's only a prototype and a small device, so it remains to be seen, how scaling it up would affect the efficiency.
Man, you put together a top-notch channel here. I *love* how you provide a write up of the script with citations, and that's one of the main reasons whenever I see an Undecided new video I go straight there.
Thank you for this! I have been pondering all kinds of thoughts and ideas on the subject for a long time. Despite where I live, there are still many concerns about our drinking water, such as hexavalent chromium that was leaked into our water supply recently, etc. There's more I can say, but I really just wanted to thank you for all your work and sharing this amazing information ~ I, and am sure all your viewers, are really very grateful for what you are doing! It is extemely useful and very helpful ~> and trustworthy, as you cover many other factors and it's effects, etc.... so Thank You!!!
These are technologies that definitely have a place in the future especially in water stressed area. It might help if people had a solution like this at home to further lower the strain on water resources. Of course, recycling used water should still be an important part of the process of generating fresh water.
One factor in the puzzle that is rarely talk about is most Desal plants are at sea level (obviously) and the clean water then needs to be pumped uphill to be used. This adds a lot to the energy costs.
Very interesting. I am now retired, but worked in Pharma for over 25 years. Our USP water systems used Carbon beds, RO membranes, and Mixed Beds along with water softeners. There was a considerable loss of water along with the brine associated with softeners.
Thanks, gives me something to think about while I’m drinking ice tea on the back porch!
Although not a "prepper" by my definition, I do like being less reliant on large scale infrastructure. This leads me to be more in tune with these small scale options. Thanks for bringing this information together for our consideration. ~P
Please report this video for misinformation
@@jermsbestfriend9296 What counter-factual information was presented in this video?
@@jermsbestfriend9296 why?
What is your definition of prepper?
Hey Matt, I think you should do more interviews with the researchers of these projects, I think you could give them a spot light and have great conversations on your channel also. I don't know how they'd feel about it but I would love to see more scientists becoming rock stars in this day and age.
Great suggestion, researchers are more accessible now and can reach a wider audience. Before people, I'd say they can use social media even to connect with researchers in their field. Vlogging experiments, asking questions and talking about encountered challenges via video would be really cool.
This is a great idea. I’m commenting so hopefully it will get more attention.
I've always seen getting water from the air as a somewhat lacking strategy because most of the people who genuinely need water are in arid areas with low humidity. I find improvements in desalination technology the most likely solution to the water crisis. While not everyone lives near an ocean, desalination can produce massive amounts of water especially if done more efficiently than we do it now.
He specifically went over the fact that it could work in low humidity environments though ?
Did you watch the whole video? If you did, and are sticking by what you said, then you need to specify the amount of humidity in the problem areas you would be speaking about. Because the video addressed rather low humidity areas, even below 15% though I do not know how far below 15% it could be handling,.
as long as there is energy to put into it water from air can work, but if it's not free (paid off or very optimal solar) it's a huge energy consumer for very little water. you can't get a full flowing garden hose of water without a sports field of solar, or more. it is very energy intensive, enen in humid areas.
25000 miles of desert coast line in the world.
Mountain areas are often dry but can have a lot of moisture
@@volvo09 They use it in mountainous areas gather the water and use gravity to move the water around
A little comment just to thank you for your videos. I'm not a native English speaker but you speak well enough for a full understanding. So I don't comment most of the time, but it helps the YT algo so it worse it sometimes, for your referencing.
Thanks for sharing these simple, cheap and portable drinking water solutions.
There is an error in the copy. “20 watts of power per liter” from reference [5] does not make sense. Watt is a power unit but we are seeking the energy cost per liter. I assume the answer is 20W / 0.3 L/hr = 66.7 Whr/L. Either way, great video. 👍
Exactly....
What Joel said ;)
Probably "20 watt hours per litre" was intended. Or something like that.
Just read an interesting factoid today in "The Precipice", by Toby Ord (hey Matt, could you review this book?). There are 26 million liters of accessible fresh water for every person on Earth. The problem is, they're not equally distributed. Hence interest in desalination. For example, here in Minneapolis, there are multiple actual lakes within walking distance of every resident. It rains and snows all year round, so fresh water is plentiful. But we considered moving to New Mexico, where lakes are nearly nonexistent, and most of the water is coming from drilling into an aquifer that is being drained at an alarming and unsustainable rate. And of course, most of humanity's population is concentrated on or near seacoasts.
One of the weird things people don't really comprehend is how much water is around us. Some areas obviously much less than others, but if we as a society, stop flattening our land we could repair the earth. If you create conditions where the land has terrain features that direct but slow water down, and allow it to pool into ponds, it keeps the surrounding area wet and able to sustain life, and as it slowly drains, it refills aquifers. Today we build flat land, and direct the water into run offs and sewers and dump it somewhere, which just dries out land and makes droughts worse.
You'd be shocked at how many areas of the world struggle for fresh water, but get so much rain and dump it right into the ocean. Then there are areas that have repaired their land, get a small fraction of that water, and never even have to irrigate their fields.
Pulling moisture from the air in all buy a few select areas seems really damaging.
It's not really how much clean water that is available! It's more of how much of that"clean water" is potable?
@@rll9911 As any serious hiker will tell you, assume none of it is potable. fwiw, I said fresh water, not clean water, meaning water with no (or nearly no) salt, water we can drink if it’s clean. But basically, any water out in the wild can be assumed contaminated with potentially dangerous bacteria or other microorganisms, and possibly dangerous chemicals as well. But if it’s fresh water, it can be cleaned, by something as simple as boiling or as complex as a city water plant.
We've definitely got lakes here in NM, but nothing like the number you've got in MN. Something that's positive about our landlocked state is that we aren't going to get drowned by sea level rise! We may burn up and blow away-- a lot of our state did this year-- but we won't drown. (Um, except in the monsoon flooding of the burnt areas.....) We don't get many tornadoes, either.
We're already very good at conserving water here, and we need to keep getting better.
You'd probably like northern NM. Mountain lakes, lots of green.
@@EleneDOM Yeah, we’re still thinking seriously about northern NM. Mountains in the high desert are a happy place for my body. I’d dreamed of finding someplace around Pecos, but the Calf Canyon/Hermit’s Peak fire definitely gave me pause.
But yeah, a few mountain lakes and reservoirs here and there are nothing like being four blocks from the Mississippi and a brisk walk from two separate lakes. We’re called the “Land of 10,000 Lakes”, but it’s actually closer to 20,000. We’re just modest about it.
for how to handle the brine: we use it to make salt further inland, we sell some of the resulting salt, the rest we package up and throw back into salt mines, from the salt mines we can resell and refine it for molten salt thermal batteries and molten salt based power plants. we could also likely use it to mine lithium and sodium for lithium and sodium based batteries. Something else we could try is weather manipulation, if we start pumping a good amount of sea water inland into deserts we could raise local humidity levels, increase cloud cover for the surrounding areas and use this to fight desertification, we could make more of the desert habitable, we might even be able to start reforesting a desert in a few decades of pumping or using canals to move sea water inland.
I do field work in remote locations of Alaska, often in the Y-K Delta where fresh water is not available outside of villages. In those cases, we can't even use a portable gravity filter unless meltwater is available, which is only for a brief time at the start of summer. The only alternative has been hauling in jugs of water which requires takes up precious fuel and space in support aircraft. Something like this, combined with a solar panel, would be ideal. I'll be watching the development of this tech. Thanks for the informative video!
I always get so excited by these new technologies and find a I use for them in my personal life. But I have learned to hold back my enthusiasm some as it seems they disappear of never make it to production. Would love to see a video on the ones you have looked into that actually made it to production
yeah, most of these are investment startups. the company has a barely feasible idea, and just throws marketing money at it to get hype based investment.
if it were that easy, they wouldn't be talking to me and you. countries would be flipping out over it. but there is always a cost, it's not as simple as quick, cheap, organic filters. there IS a downside.
Yes, let's see the production model, one can actually buy rather than become a missionary for idea.
This is a good time to explain my idea. So, you have wind turbines that aren't running because we don't need the power at that moment. You need fresh water. Boy do I have the solution for you. Giant dehumidifiers. This idea came to me when I got a large dehumidifier for my garage. It would fill up it's one gallon tank in a few hours and I would have to constantly empty it. I thought to myself 'this water could be used out west' and that's how it all came about.
well it would stop rain to fall :/
That sounds like a good idea to get fresh water from the air but if it takes more power to get the humid air to drop the water you may as well import/buy gallons of fresh water for some other place.......I doubt that an area that is not gifted with high humidity would get much fresh water form a device that you state so your device would be running on power all of the time but little water would be made..........you should try out your idea in a dry area (desert maybe) that lacks humidity.
Thanks for the great new video! I really like these videos that return to previously discussed technologies to see how they're progressing or examine them more deeply.
They're both really interesting, but the ICP process seems to me to still be at a level where it needs more development. It is a very cool engineering based solution, though.
Of the two, the gel film seems the most revolutionary right now. By harvesting water vapor from the air you're getting the sun to do the more energy intensive desalination part as it evaporates seawater. That way the salt stays in the ocean and you don't have to worry about by-products. Also water vapor is everywhere, so this gel could be used to harvest drinking water anyplace on Earth. It may seem counter-intuitive, but I think it might be best used in coastal areas and on islands, because the water vapor is constant there and immediately recharged by the sun. But it could find mass adoption anywhere fresh water is needed, including countries like Bangladesh where the water supply tends to be contaminated.
The big question (imo) is if this gel technology can be upsized to industrial scale. I know the inventors have intended it to be a small scale, single person or household solution - but the low energy requirement suggests that it could be a real competitor to industrial desalination plants.
Where in the Southwest is the humidity as high as 15%. I lived In Arizona. The humidity was 5%. Good luck with that.
I was with you until you said the solar ion device required 20 watts per litre. Why does anyone - let alone a presumably well educated technology expert always confuse watts (i.e. joules per second) with energy (i.e. joules).
Was that 20 watts over a period of a hundred years for 1 litre? or was it 20 watts for 1 litre every minute (damn - that would be impressive)
From his citation, the journal says: "The resulting water exceeded World Health Organization quality guidelines, and the unit reduced the amount of suspended solids by at least a factor of 10. Their prototype generates drinking water at a rate of 0.3 liters per hour, and requires only 20 watts of power per liter." So 3.33 hours for one litre of water. E = P*t = 20W * 3.33 hours = 66.66 Joules per litre.
@@richardlighthouse5328 Nonsense. You're confusing power with energy again. Or maybe the article cited does.
if the device really consumes energy at the rate of 20 watts (that is, 20 joules per second), and can process 0.3 litres in an hour (i.e. 3600 seconds) - then that would work out at 20 * 3600 / 0.3 joules per litre - or 240,000 joules per litre.
Now the thing is, joules are really, really small. There are 3.6 million joules in a KWh, so 240,000 joules is still only 0.066 KWh, or about a cent's worth depending on the price your utility charges. Regular tap water costs around 0.1 cents per litre (again, depending on your utility), so it looks like this desalination process costs 10 times that of regular tap water. Sounds steep, but if it's true, and if the device lasts for a long, long time - this would still be impressive.
there is a super easy fix to the brine solution. Pump it to large holding areas on land. This would actually replenish underground aquifers create more humidity in the air as well so areas down wind of these would experience more rain events. Plus we can harvest lithium from this process as well as sea salt.
Why not skip the desalination all together? Nevada and Utah have large dry lake beds, some already covered in salt. Pump sea water into them and let nature take care of the desalination process.
And Mg, Na, Cl, K, S, he'll even Uranium.
These aren't worth extracting at the concentrations found in regular seawater, but not only is the idea that desalination will have a massive throughput, but it is doing exactly what you would want to do to make extracting minerals appealing, it concentrates them.
I don't see any reason why there needs to be a waste stream from desalination at all, at least with some targeted development
Salts don't filter out, you'll have salty aquifers. There are some naturally, they're not good for people, animals or plants.
@@got2kittys it can also cause damage to municipal wells as it changes the chemistry of the water.
@@got2kittys it actually depends on the depth of the aquifers. And they can still make large holding areas lines with something that would filter it out the salt. Which would just produce more humidity for more rain events. Especially if the bottoms of the shallow holding areas are dark in color.
Now as far as the hydration and dehydration of these beads or this material, now that has some serious serious possibilities!
I enjoyed your presentation
I live in Mississippi. Just walk outside and take a deep breath and your good for the day.
I have difficulty seeing this as a solution to the water crisis. Regardless of where we take the water from it's going to impact the surrounding environment and life there, It's trading one problem for another. We know that the amount of water we consume and use in our household is only a fraction of total water usage. If I remember correctly it's about 8% (someone fact check me on that). The largest usage comes from industrial farming (a lot of which is farming in dry areas where crops should not be grown) and manufacturing. We should be aiming to address that issue
All of Matt's videos are this way unfortunately 😿
Tech solutions are cool and all, but they won’t save us. We need to first aggressively pursue the low-tech solutions like disallowing the farming of water-intensive crops in dry environments and preventing the pollution of fresh water sources.
People seem to forget that industrial use of water is to make food and products that people want. Need to reduce industrial use of water? Stop wasting food and buying things you don't need. 🤦🏻♂️
Permaculture is a good place to start.
And changing who you vote for will also help.
Rain water runoff can easily be more effectively be absorbed to recharge our water table with little to no harm done, likely it would actually improve all stages of ecosystems along waterways. But green nutjobs in California think it's more important to show the runoff, because fish.
You should go watch the video series on how India is adopting permaculture and turning land into practical jungle with just some water catches and ground cover.
@@rothandre6497 permaculture avoids fertilizers ... are you going to decide which billions of people will die?
Use the brine from desalination for salt production. Instead of discharging the brine, allow it to evaporate in a shallow pool and you've got crude salt.
Good idea, but the salt may be need to be treated and cleaned before it could be put to use.
Yeah, it seems like an obvious solution, so I'm wondering why that's not done. Is it the land area needed? Is it some of the salts you'd get if you evaporate all the water? I know I've heard for commercial sea salt production they don't boil off all the water because you'll contaminate your salt with bitter tasting magnesium(think it was magnesium) salts
Crude salt yes with a lot of pollutants too
Northern states use a lot of road salt in the winter!
I used to live near polar circle as a kid. Salt has low commercial value. Hence shipping costs limits practical use.
Dumping it back into the sea creates issues with marine life. Major desalination plants in Texas have been refused permission to get setup by the EPA blocking desalination...
No smoke without fire?
I love your attitude towards new inventions and technology - optimistic and yet critically thoughtful.
One potential use for brine is as ice melt for winter roads (after dried).
Nice video. Current state-of-the-art seawater desalination membranes are actually a very energy efficient separation technology. The "large energy input" that is required occurs because thermodynamics tells us that energy is required to de-mix solutions (e.g., de-mix salt and water molecules). Current desalination membranes operate close to the thermodynamic minimum for separating salt from water. This energy is relatively large because there is so much salt in the ocean that must be de-mixed, not because the membranes have poor efficiency.
I want to hear more about this gel solution. Konjac root is extremely hydrophilic (it's essentially composed entirely of dietary fiber, hence its use in shirataki noodles), so it would make sense if it had the capacity to absorb ambient air moisture, but I see no way to release that moisture without the use of significant energy. I suspect the environmental impacts of such a technology would be minimal at best, air is highly fluid and mixes much more easily than saline water, and there is a TON of water in the air, but the tech leaves me with questions.
I'm curious if there will be any impact from large scale adoption of these technologies. what will removing moisture out of the air do especially to an already dry area? Also had this question if wind turbines and wave power. energy removed would have to have some impact, wonder if this has been looked into. also the mit water purifier. I wonder if this can be scaled up seems like it would be a much better first stage for any desalination plant.
We can and should always run environmental impact analyses, but I’m skeptical that moisture extraction would have that much of an impact. Maybe at industrial scales? But it’s not as if the water permanently disappears. We can pull the water out of the atmosphere, but unless we bottle it up and never release it back out it’s going to eventually evaporate and re-enter the atmosphere. There is also such a large amount of water on earth that we cannot conceivably remove any consequential amount of it permanently.
As for wind and tidal power, I don’t honestly know but many of the same arguments from above apply. Granted we’re not using them at very large scales today, but at current scales we’re simply not extracting even a fraction of a percent of the total available energy. And while we could discover unintended impacts in the future, you also have to ask yourself what the alternative is? Wind and other renewables have way less damaging environmental impacts than fossil fuels, and none of the perceived fears with nuclear fission. What other energy source would you recommend?
To your overall point, yes everything we do has some kind of impact or cost. There’s not really any getting around that. Which means that every decision we make is a series of tradeoffs. At the same time, we don’t have perfect information and we have needs that have to get met today. We can’t always wait to perform a study on what exactly gets screwed over if we use A instead of B. Or we can, but that comes at the cost of needs not getting met. So it comes down to what things we value and prioritize.
Wind turbines are no "worse" than anything else in the way of wind like trees or buildings. It would take absolutely ludicrous amounts of them to change the weather. If you're unsure, remember that a turbine can only take part of the energy out of the wind, if they took it all they would stop turning.
I remember something about this being looked at.
I think there was the idea of getting electricity at the same time you take energy out of areas with violent weather, or something like that. I just remember the end conclusion would require basically the entire area of the Sahara to be covered in windmills before any effect became noticeable.
I'm just pulling scraps out of the back shed of memory here, so don't take my word for anything. Just look around online, I'm sure you'll find something
Higher humidity is a negative consequence of climate crisis. I'd bet removing water from the air would be net positive. Bonus points: install zillions of gel film packs in forests, to replenish soil moisture lost to heat.
I imagine it would be similar to current cloud seeding, it doesn't really work outside of specific conditions and has no real impact on the environment at large because it is just not that effective. Cloud seeding efforts that are ongoing in China impact large areas for hours at a time and seem to only increase rain fall by at most 10%. The gel tech might be usable on a small temporary scale for disaster relief or backpacking but I don't see it being an industrial scale solution.
I love the gel idea from the aspect that you could install it in say an attic and product enough water for the home, plus the heat of the attic would improve it. Sounds really promising as long as the gel could last long enough and be low cost enough.
Great overview of the state of the art of desalination! Thanks
Most people have a water generator in their houses right now - their air conditioners. Air conditions put out way more water from the air than people think, and if we can sanitize and filter that water (its usually heavily bacteria infected) , I think it could be part of the fight for clean water.
Agree 100%.
When I was on holidays in Greece, they had the AC connected to a bucket that we had to empty 2-3 times a day. I guess it created about 30-40 liters of water per day. We used it to water plants, but filtering it would be a good source of potable water.
Seasonal only and output depends on run time and relative humidity.
@@lynncomstock1255 Yes, seasonal, but if we're talking about air conditioning, most productive at the times of year when fresh water is most needed!
The concern with pulling moisture out of the air is the same with cloud seeding, you take rain and or local moisture and keep it for your area and prevent it for other areas ... take the moisture out of the air for drinking but prevent plants from collecting water from morning dew. So people that can afford to take it prevent others of getting it. Because something can be done, should it it be done?...Sci should always look at the long term affects.
@Sci Me
Effects.
It is not the same; cloud seeding triggers a system that is supersaturated with moisture causing water to precipitate. in the other case, you are simply condensing the water present in the air either by cooling or by adsorption. In the later case, taking out the water from the adsorbed matrix can be difficult.
@@janami-dharmam sorry you misunderstood, it's was not about the how to get water. It was about taking the water before it would naturally go somewhere.
I live in Karachi Pakistan I like your comments
Lol LARQ. I supported them through their kickstarter and got 4 bottles. They all got red rings of death. They replaced them and had problems with those. It wasn't until they redesigned the caps that they problems seemed to go away. Another problem just showed up to take its place. The metal inside the cap was corroding underneath the paint and caused paintchips to get into the water, which I assume is because the cap is made of aluminum and the bottle is made of stainless steel. End of the story was they wouldn't warranty it since it was out of warranty (1 year lol) even tho every bottle will eventually have this problem, and they basically told me that wasn't why its chipping.
I like the MIT set up. I, and a lot of my neighbors, have shallow, (28' to 30' with a 12' water table.) wells that can only be used for watering the lawn, but this filter/nonfilter possibly could be used to make enough potable water for culinary use, and reduce my/our need to rely on public water supplies, which I have to filter to get the rust from the old city water pipes out of it. Yes, I have replaced my entire water pipe system for my house from the meter in with PEX, so I'm not the source of the contamination. I've looked at reverse osmosis, and decided that it is too wasteful of the precious commodity of water. I live in a desert area with 14" of rain annually on average, and a lot less lately.
When I hear about the brine-residue from desalination, I always wondered if it's possible to dump that salt residue in areas like the North Atlantic to counteract the freshwater runoff from Greenland that threatens to interrupt the flow of the Gulf Stream due to the different water densities.
As far as I understand it that would have a devastating ecological impact, as you'd essentially be turning all that fresh water into salt water.
Great question. I like how you think.
@@Sancarn You wouldn't dump it on the ice. I was thinking that you'd put it in freighter ships and release it in the ocean further off of the coast to add more salt content to the freshwater diluted ocean water. No idea if it works, it was just an idea how to potentially use the brine and alleviate the looming dangers of the ocean current disruption.
@@Equulai I see two problems with your idea:
1. It would be expensive.
2. Would probably be an ecological disaster, because you will inadvertently introduce invasive species. If you move and dump such amounts of material from one area to another that is unavoidable.
(that's already a huge problem with the ballast water of ships. If you want to know more about that topic you should look up the "Ballast Water Management Convention")
@@Jehty_ It would cost money, but what do we do with the brine at the moment?Just dump bit back into the water where it was extracted?`
And the ecological disaster: I cannot see that. The brine is a result from a filtration and separation process. Except for extremophiles, can something of substance really survive and pass through all these processes?
I can see, however, that the introduction of all the salt in specific areas could cause an unhealthy increase of salinity in these areas until it dilutes enough.
One of the things that came to mind when I heard about this (earlier) was could this be implemented on a very large scale? In the case where a significant weather/water event might be arriving to cause damage, could large amounts of water be extracted from the atmosphere to degrade a storm to something less potentially damaging. This would allow for reallocation of moisture from a damaging atmospheric event to a surface need area. Definitely not the long term (environmentally sustainable) solution, but a stop gap measure. Wrote to the company on it, and they had not yet looked at large scale implementation like that.
If you have the energy for that scale of water capture you probably have the energy and tech for weather manipulation.
Liked this!! Instead of solving the world on a sliver platter I like how these solutions are "one of the kind" into solving SPECIFIC problems and targets. Instead of wondering how to solve everything and anything.
I was very astonished to see that these technologies work as well as they do for their simplicity. While still exploratory, they are very promising, and more investment should be made to continue R&D. I don't see any major downside to them, especially the gel. In comparison to, say, brine discharge from large-scale reverse osmosis desalination as you pointed out in the video, Matt. These seem to be on the right track. I think we need these more than ever now.
Thermodynamically, how does that "zero electricity" solution work? It seems too good to be true.
Looking at the Nature source, it says they have to heat it above 45°C to break the hydrogen bonds and actually get the water back, and that heat has to come from somewhere. In fact the picture they show of the full setup shows wires connected and something labeled "heaters" so there is definitely energy involved and it seems they're using electricity. At best this seems like a more efficient dehumidifier.
Spoiler alert. it doesn't work. Matt always push this nonsense to his uncritical audience.
Can't wait for Thunderfoot's reaction
These are very promising technologies, thanks for the video! Here in S CA we have a desalination plant in Carlsbad that produced 50M gallons per day of water from the ocean. There seems to be a lot of debate about it, so while people debate, the plant continues to pump out 50M gallons per day at a fairly low cost, using an environmentally freindly process. It's amazing how Americans can fight over anything, even proven technology. If we could just harness Americans ability to argue, we would have an infinite source of energy.
Carlsbad Desalination Plant in San Diego, California, requires approximately 35 MW to run and provides 50 million gallons of water supply per day.
Where does that power come from.
Well A lot of it is hydro, the more you need desalinization the more likely your not going to have the hydro power to run it.
So yes harnessing the hot air would be a good idea!
if 50 mil gallons and 35MW checks out, that's 4.43 Wh per liter. Assuming he meant the MIT device uses 20W and takes 3.3 hours per liter, that's 66 Wh. Ouch. Hope it gets better when it's scaled up.
At $50 per unit it would cost 1.32 billion USD to get the same capacity. (about 26 million devices)
The Carlsbad desalination plant cost one billion according to Wall Street Journal, via Wikipedia.
I love your work. Thank you sir, for spreading good news.
Agree about the brine. I've never been in saltier water than the shoreline off Aruba's desalination plant.
Slightly off-tangent, but can we use the leftover brine from seawater desalination for Lithium production? Given that the U.S. is trying to boost domestic Lithium production, it would make sense to combine the two processes if it's scientifically and economically feasible.
I don't have a STEM background so if I sound ridiculous asking this, please excuse my ignorance.
Very good observation, there is Lithium in Sea Water, but the brine is loaded in Sodium from the salt in ocean water, and right now scientists are working on a Sodium battery that doesn't use Lithium or rare Earth minerals, it potentially could be a win-win for everyone, but more scientific studies need to be done, but the concept is a good one.
Unfortunately most brines do not contain Lithium salts. Most Lithium is mined in Bolivia and Zaire.
@@allanlank turns out in the us the salton sea is full of it and sea water has some too
Li accounts for a very small percent only. In the case that those countries or cities with desalinated water as their water, decide to switch to brine as their source of the metals than the cheaper mined ones, then it can be used. But currently there is no demand for such expensive metal
Assuming all of the worlds water desalination is from sea water (which it isn't) - You can get about 5000 kg of lithium. Which is very small already, but in reality only 1% of the worlds desalination is from sea water also. So 50kg of lithium from worlds sea water desalination, which is not a lot. So no, it's likely not really feasible at the moment.
So, my question would be, given that humans need water (as well as salt) to exist, why can't we use the brine as part of the whole 'collect sea salt' thing? Honestly asking due to curiosity.
You saved me the effort of writing that same question.
In fact, traditional salt production practically only needs an open space in the sun.
Better yet, they plan to harvest rare earth elements from it
The amount of 'need' we have for salt is a tiny fraction of the 'need' we have for water. The ratios are not there, and most of the salts recovered by desalinization are genuinely a waste product - best stored back in the ocean we pulled them from... that's where the fresh water will end up again anyway, so this is not going to result in an increase in ocean salinity - the desalinization plant effluent concentration is only of a concern at the local discharge site.
@@KhalidElMouloudi how much of rare earth elements can you harvest from it?
@@karolstopinski8350 the concentration is next to nothing but since they are precious it's probably worth the trouble
Very interesting Matt. Perhaps the saline output should be thought of as a potential source. There are so many contaminants of sea water that could be recovered if they are concentrated.
Even Salt itself is a useful product when dried out although the volumes produced to recover sufficient water would be in excess of our needs and maybe utilise too much energy, it is an interesting possibility. When we view the vast areas of drying seawater to produce commercial masses of edible salt (seen for example in the north of western Australia) there is the possibility to utilise one of these techniques as a primary stage to pre-concentrate the seawater and recover some potable water at the same time..
This konjac (In Japanese Konyaku) is also called 'Devil's Tongue' in English. It is a root that when mashed, turns into a tasteless jelly that has no calories. It is used for jelly (jello) in Japan and put made into the vermicelli-style colourless noodles you might have soon in Asian grocers.
As usual, Matt is quenching my thirst for knowledge.
😂
Quenching it with b.s.
All this "water from air" nonsense is completely impractical and very expensive.
Yet another magical handwavium is not gonna change it.
Lol, you have chosen a very bad source.
I'm sorry, my dude.
Whenever I have a shower I marvel that I'm washing my body in drinking water
I've always wondered actually why we have never invested in two d different water: drinking and non mineralised water for baths, irrigation etc
@@emmanuelcarretero5758 haha. Golden!
@@emmanuelcarretero5758 lol
@@anneeq008 same.
@@anneeq008 More trouble than it's worth in most cases, in homes it would require a third set of pipes within houses and to houses. The main cost of drinking water is in the transportation rather than the purification.
Localized solutions will become more important as time passes. I’m glad to the development of this research. Thx for the content
Swales and water retention are the long term solutions. Look up some desert reforestation projects. It all starts with slowing/capturing water and letting it soak into the ground. This can be done other places too, if you have wells that have dried up, this is for you!
How do ypu do that?
Indirectly correlated, I'd love to see deep geothermal made feasible.
Quaise CEO Carlos Araque points to this kind of endlessly renewable energy as what's needed for the countries to be able to desalinate at low cost -- wherever geographically needed.
Sadly deep geothermal doesnt get the attention and investment that more pie in the sky technologies like fusion do.
Your sponsor looks like a regular charcoal filter.. Can it filter lead? I doubt it.
Fantastic, that was just what I needed.... A new smart thingy... A smart pitcher...yeah....
Matt, you are great and another wonderful video. Many people here and who live in our level of wealth need to broaden their knowledge, I’ve worked in some of those countries and there is no water shortage, they lack the infrastructure to simply clean and deliver. It’s not about people of color, global warming, or the earth drying up, it’s about money, ineptitude of government, or just peoples ignorance. Local instability and lack of education is a much bigger issue. The idea that water processing is bad for the environment is wrong too, rivers today are vastly cleaner then they were 50 years ago. Water born disease were here long before Europeans showed up. This tech is very cool and ideas and tech like this will solve the problems we face and ensure our ecosystem continues to improve.
My favourite one of these is the Solar Water Dome that is being put up at NEOM in Saudia Arabia. I think if we can create relatively low cost reverse rivers that can irrigate crops, we can pull lots of carbon down to current desert lands that could help nature, human food requirements and the carbon cycle..
Problem with NEOM is its a fantasy. The Line is made with false promises and tech that doesn't work. They show flying people and parks with trees but only people that live on the top level will see sun light and that would be only 4 hours a day. Food would have to take up all the land they can see from the line which is a desert.... see an issues.
Couple this with the new research that recently came out that human must eat some a percentage animal protein in their diet to get proper nutrients, the fact you can't expand the line for new families, hyper loop doesn't exist and the train going one way with no stops would have to go faster than the current bullet train and you can imagine how dumb the line idea actually is.
@@killrade4434 I mostly agree. Just think this particular technology has real potential..
To convert water in the air (steam) into liquid water, you need to extract a precise amount of energy from it. This amount never changes. How would rhis gel make this any different?
I know right, some people think it’s magic not science
Dehumidifiers also have one other significant problem:
There is a very small amount of water in the air, and the dehumidifier would need more and more energy to flow more and more air with lower and lower humidity - while in significant scale to produce any sort of sufficient amount of water, it also eventually creating a desert all around its location.
And with scale, I mean that if considering 30°C / 100% humidity drained to 0%, it means 35 ml of water out of cubic meter of air. Thus to obtain 2 L of water per 24 hours, you need to completely drain 57 cubic meters of 100% humid air.
In case, that humidity is only 30% and you can drain it up to 10% (= 5,5 ml/cubic meter), you'll need 363 cubic meters of air - that's a cube with an edge of 7,2 meters - just to get enough liquid for 1 person for 1 day. Not to mention, that it would be "distilled water" and you would have to mineralize it first, to prevent serious health issues…
It's just another SCAM…
Vapour and steam aren't the same. Vapour is in a higher energy state. Convince that vapour to give up some energy to its surroundings and you have liquid water. The transition yields energy.
@@FalkonNightsdale sorry, what health issues does distilled water cause? You can get minerals from food sources, it doesn't have to come from water...
Not STEAM, water vapor. Vapor and steam are completely different.
WOW that gel is amazing
We get rain along but still the uk has to put off our taps for watering plants we need this solutions good video
Is using the gels and similar technologies to remove water from the air the best approach?
In our complex eco system, I imagine taking water from the air will have unintended consequences.
Maybe using the ocean is safer overall. Imagine pulling water from the air and causing an ever increasing reduction in rainfall.
The orders of magnitudes are OK. There is as much water in the air than there is drinkable water underground, and there is 1000x less water in the clouds.
@@jowjor considering the recent report of ground damage and sinking due to the huge reduction of the water table in the area, I'd say you're confirming my point. We have a bigger impact on the climate both local and large scale than we realize.
There are A LOT of us now and if we're not careful, outlr "solutions" will only lead to worse, more unsolvable problems.
@@NoTimeLeft_ Main difference is, any water you take from the air is back in a few days, while the underground water takes years to do a full circle, and you can take more than there is raining. And you don't need to take all the underground water tu causes issues, only a small part and there is voids everywhere.
Air can hold lots of water. These are taking nowhere near as much water out as you think.
@@falconerd343 take out as much as I think.
Are you considering if tens of millions of people if not hundreds of millions used it?
I am talking about foresight.
How many people in a given area can use it?
If each person pulls 17L of water out of the air, how many people in one square mile can do the same?
Pretty sure if an item like that is needed, it's needed for many people.
Just because something CAN work, doesn't mean it WILL work, given the scaling and impact.
But all the focus was placed on making it work.
If we really want to get serious about reducing water usage, it's the agricultural sector that needs to be changed. By placing crops, that are capable, in greenhouses, using hydroponics and, eventually, artificially lit plant factories (vertical farms.) Not only would this save tremendous amounts of water, there would be also be increased yields and in less space.
There would, of course, be an increase in energy required to make crops this way but it will likely be the only way as farming land and water resources becomes less available in the future.
Yes, but there are limits to how much we can possibly save all our resources like water, food, energy, you name it. Why do we need so much resources and become stingy with it in the first place? Take a moment to ponder the root cause of all these problems caused by....humans.
This video makes me so glad I live around the Great Lakes.
Thank you Matt.
I do think that these technologies have a place in solving the water shortages. Just like solar panels on your house. Both these offer a level of independence from a system that can be unreliable.
2 view 4 likes congrats!
Love this report‼️👍🏻 Great potential and doable on boats. Fabulous ‼️
Weaving the sponsor into the related subject, GIFTED! More puns/humour please!
This is sorely needed for disaster relief.
To keep things simple my vote goes towards technologies that focus on making use of rain water where ever it rains. Nature takes care of this completely free resource and it is plentiful in many/most places. How much tinkering is required in order to make rain water potable and useful for daily everyday use? The sun desalinates the ocean by making it evaporate and it collects in clouds that gather above us.
I think rain water gets overlooked...
Glad you changed the title, it seems the old one put my back up for some reason.
Good info. Thanks
I like that you discussed BRINE! For every action there's a reaction!
The gel system could be used as part of a solar desalination system if you use the gel system in a solar box type system where you get 100% humidity in the box with the gel system hanging in the air above the water being evaporated in the enclosed box. with a black plastic pipe coil preheating system before the water went into the evaporation box, you could get a very high running rate for desert area water with high toxic water from wells.
I lived in one desert area where we had to haul water for drinking and cooking because the well water was 500% over the safe standard for arsenic.
The water also would destroy swamp coolers we used for cooling our house. I set up a simple solar distillation system to remove the salts and arsenic from the water, and the swamp cooler lasted for a couple of years without changing pads or doing repairs because of corrosion.
That gel would succeed regardless whether or not you need to constantly replace them. They are crucial in emergencies.
The gel sounds great, but it does need to be freeze dried before use and it requires a heater and condenser to collect the water. Also the water still needs to be filtered after collection.
I love all the ideas for harvesting water but ceasing to grow cotton & alfalfa in deserts might do more good.
i’d like to try the suitcase ICP filter.
The portable supply unit, if it can be mass produced at $50 is pretty impressive. You would basically need one, and a solar panel for each member of your family to get all your purified drinking water needs. As far as the brine discharge, there are some uses for it. There are a type of beets called ' fodder beets' which can be used to feed chickens, cows and pigs which grow really well with salty water. The brine could be diluted into typical irrigation systems. On a household scale, brine can just be used to kill weeds between cracks in your sidewalk etc since a household would produce very little. It can also be used to de-ice sidewalks... it is basically the same thing you go to the store to buy in the winter.
The MIT device sounds extremely interesting. For areas that have already been devastated by climate change the most, where rivers have gone dry, and underground water tables have been lowering year after year. The option for a more efficient way to extract fresh water from the sea that could potentially be powered completely off the sun which we're getting more and more of every year is very attractive. Not sure how much this can be scaled up and keep its efficiency advantages over membrane solutions, but it could even be used for agriculture and renaturing land if we're smart about it.
I saw some people discussing the fact that most of our fresh water goes to agriculture over drinking water globally. Whilst yes that is obviously true I think they failed to forget that countries that can afford to use fresh water for agriculture already prioritise municipalities and drinking water for people. This device will make a huge difference to areas that are literally uninhabitable and don't have any access to fresh water in the first place.
I'm more worried about the damage to the natural environment and loss of trees and habitats to wildlife due to water shortages. It's a tragedy and we're already well beyond the tipping point to sustain life other than humans in many parts of the world.
Sorry the whole point of there setup is that it works on small scale. It uses more
electricity then reverse osmosis. This is not a solution on large scales at all.
You get more water from solar powered reverse osmosis then this.
That gell looks neat for air conditioning houses. Potentially
Thank you sir love and respect from India u r doing great work for humanity support to u
Sure glad I live in the heart of the Canadian water belt known as Michigan.
We need to start capturing all natural precipitation.
Very nice progress! :)
Hey this video was amazing. I would say the push of a button water collection can be used in ship or boats and the the second option looks promising .
As a life-long resident of the Southern California I have become well aware of our limited supply of water. In fact cities the size of Los Angeles would have never been possible without imported water. And LA has experienced many droughts during my lifetime, but none as severe as what we are facing now. I have always wondered why a city located by one of the largest bodies of water hasn't started a desalination program. Water rstrictiions now are making people think about what our future may hold. Water insecurity is very real LA could have serious problems in the near future. Now is the time for a solution. The technology seems promising, especially the gel that can extract water from the air. There should be a statewide mandate to implement this on any new and existing construction. Like the solar panels on rooftops to ease the power consumed onn the grid, water for personal consumption could be made on our own property. II always enjoy watching your videos about the latest tech and the problem solving going on in the science community.
Living in the Southwestern US, I'm very concerned about solutions to the drought. I hope we can do the full court press and get the water flowing again. Thanks for covering this incredibly important topic.
considering the desert nature of where you live,the simple answer seems to be ,live somewhere else..the south west up to calif etc have overused a resource that was never going to fulfill the insatiable greed of the residents of those areas...
Thanks to people that live in the desert I have to use Low flow devices that suck. I live less than 100 miles from the largest freshwater lakes in the world. We have so much water we have a hard time getting of it..
But I have to use two rinses to get all the soap from my clothes and flush 2-3 times if I take a big dump because of.. federal regulations designed to protect the population that decided to live in a desert.
booooo! booooo! i booo you!
Awesome. Let's get a bunch of gel to Flint and Jackson ASAP.
Thanks!
How does the gel work? Hang it up and the water drips off it? or do you have to ring it out like a rag? You never explained the tech properly.
Here's an idea. Put a thin layer of that gel on the back of a solar panel to collect water at night and release it during the day when the panels heat up. This would not only produce some water but would also cool the panels making them more efficient.
Thats great tek !
This is a great ideas. I wish it could apply for temperatures 35 and below. Maybe someday!
Anyway get the residents of the lower southwestern states including California to purchase both. Fill up the saltine sea with the water from the ocean. Apply your method to purify the inland sea and the coastal cities.
The smaller units for residual use and the bigger unit for public & agricultural use.
When I heard the description of the gel solution for water, I immediately thought how useful this would be for portable 'watering holes' for livestock. People in arid regions would benefit from water for the animals that sustain them. "Set it and forget it" until it time to replace the gel.
That's good news. I've often thought that making fresh water, or carbon capture, could be a good use for excess energy produced by renewables if energy storage is unavailable. Probably not financially feasible yet, but a lot of problems can be solved with enough energy.
If the gel panels get developed into something that is "set it and forget it," it is an easy win. Even in regions where fresh water is more available. Simplest design to my mind would be gel mounted to the back of a black panel - cools down at night to absorb water, heat of the sun drops the moisture out of the layer into tanks placed just far enough underground to reduce heat absorption. Simple.
As a bonus, if laid out and sized correctly, they could also provide shade to the local population (human/plant/animal) to reduce their moisture requirements throughout the hottest part of the day.
Southern California is uniquely suited for desalination, because almost all of our water is transported hundreds of miles and over mountains! The amount of electricity used for transportation is actually more than it takes to desalinate where it's needed. LA and San Diego are both almost at sea level, so the cost of distributing desalinated ocean water is quite low. That's why my North San Diego County water district buys some of the 50 million gallons per day the Carlsbad Desalination Plant produces.