Its Time to Taste Atmospheric Water!
About 71% of the Earth’s surface is covered by water. Out of this, only 2.8 percent is fresh water that can be used for drinking purposes. With teeming millions of human lives and a sizable number of other life forms needing fresh water to sustain themselves, this tiny fraction of freshwater may not be sufficient in the near future. One third of the Earth’s surface may be covered by water, yet mankind has no choice but to worry about the supply of potable water in the near future. Using the major water bodies as dumping grounds for all our refuse has polluted nearly every available source. Coleridge had so aptly said, “Water water everywhere, not a drop to drink”.
An oft-overlooked and untapped source of pure water surrounds us all the time. This invisible, huge source of pure water is our atmosphere, contains 4,000 cubic miles of water that we hadn’t considered till recent years as a viable source of pure drinking water. It not only has the potential of being the biggest source of pure drinking water, it is also renewable - providing a cost-effective way to create water from air.
A major chunk of the world’s population is concentrated in areas where the air has enough moisture to provide pure drinking water to everyone. Extracting water from air may be the solution for all water supply problems - in the poorest of countries, as well as the ones which are not well endowed with freshwater sources. This technology that converts air to water has proved a boon for peacekeeping forces that have to overcome great difficulties in obtaining supplies during operations in underdeveloped nations, and disaster relief teams as well. Soon after an earthquake, the major concern of the disaster relief teams is to combat fast spreading water-related diseases like dysentery. Such occasions call for a technology that can create pure drinking water from air.
Affordable versions of this technology are available for both residential and commercial needs. It really makes good business sense to extract pure drinking water from air, since the costs are half that of bottled water, and can be used in cruise ships, hospitals, public buildings and offices. It consumes little energy and maximizes production of pure water. Agricultural fields that use the drip irrigation system could apply this process of extracting water from air very easily.
Apart from producing pure drinking water, it also has some other obvious benefits such as the avoiding the usage of non bio degradable plastic for bottled water and saving transportation costs.
Another immediate advantage of obtaining water from air is that we avoid the toxic wastes from contaminated groundwater. It is hardly possible to find any source of freshwater that does not contain traces of toxic chemicals. Even the chlorine that is used to purify water and remove disease-causing microbes is harmful to us. One such water purification system, that uses this technology, is Dewpointe. It also acts as a water dispenser with a feature that lets you adjust the cold water temperature and serves instant hot water.