Aardvark Daily

Please visit the sponsor!

Why are they not teaching science in schools?

Most people reading this column probably have a fairly reasonable understanding of the basics of science.

They recognise terms such as thermodynamics, phase-change, energy, mass, watts, etc.

Way back, when I was a high school kid in the late 1960s, we were taught the basics of chemistry, physics, biology and math. For many kids this was boring stuff but for some of us it was fascinating and incredibly interesting. These were subjects that would be the catalyst for a life-long fascination with the sciences and technologies based on them.

However, even the least-interested student eventually came away with a smattering of knowledge that would probably give them some degree of defense against scams and frauds that are based on pseudo-science and lies.

Sadly, this no longer seems to be the case, as witnessed at CES this year.

One company, Genesis Systems was there, demonstrating its magic water machine and making all sorts of promises that, under closer scrutiny, may not be quite as claimed.

Yes, it's the old "water from air" concept that has been reinvented regularly over recent decades.

The company claims that one of its gray boxes, the WaterCube WC-100, can create up to 110 US gallons of water a day -- from thin air!

Key phrase: "up to"

This 270Kg behemoth will work 24/7, sucking water vapour from the air and then filtering it before it's dumped into a couple of 50 gallon tanks, ready for use in your house or business.

Imagine that, total freedom from reticulated water supplies! Woohoo, party time!

Except... (you knew there was a catch, right?)

What they don't highlight is the extraordinary cost of this extraction process. Nor do they mention that there's no new breakthrough technology involved. In fact, what we have here is just a big old dehumidifier of the type you've been able to purchase in the local hardware store for decades.

Now perhaps the biggest lie is the claim that this system is "energy efficient".

Um... NO!

The energy cost associated with the phase change of water from vapour to liquid states is rather high I'm afraid. Even at 100 percent efficiency (ie: ignoring the losses intrinsic to the mechanical and electrical components of this device), it requires over 600W of power to create 1 litre of liquid water from vapour, and that's in ideal conditions.

Sure, if you live in a very humid location then you might just be able to create water for around 1KW per litre but that's orders of magnitude more expensive than buying water from the town-supply.

One only has to look at the electrical specifications for this box to see what I mean. It needs 6KW to operate. That's a huge amount of energy.

Of course if there is no town supply then this machine is just the duck's guts, right?

Um... NO!

In most cases the economics of simply drilling a well and harvesting artesian water would be far preferential to spending the US$20K needed to buy this beast. Once you've got a bore and pump in place, the only cost to extract your water from the ground is a few hundred watts to drive the pump -- far from the 6KW that the WC-100 needs to be sucking all day.

Of course the company claims that the device is "energy efficient". WTF?

Their idea of "energy efficient" seems to be that you could power it from solar cells -- well for at least part of the day I guess. You might get up to 8 hours of operation from a solar array but that's only going to give you (at best) 33 percent of the claimed 120 gallons per day. One must also factor in the cost of a 6KW solar array, inverter and other costs associated with all that "free" energy.

Perhaps the worst thing about these "water from air" machines is that they work best where they're needed least and vice-versa.

If you live in the tropics, where humidity often approaches 100 percent then yes, you may well get your 120 gallons of water per day for the cost of over 400KW/H in electricity (that's about NZ$110 at our electricity prices) but you could also just collect even more water from the plentiful rain that falls in such areas.

Unfortunately, if you live in a desert region, where water might be worth paying $100+ per day for, you won't be so lucky.

Deserts and other areas where humidity is usually very low, will see systems like this struggling to generate any water at all. That's simply because there's virtually no water vapour in the air to harvest. No matter how much power you put into the system and no matter how long you leave it running, you'll get very little in those tanks.

Hence the company's weasle-worded "up to" phrase when describing its water-producing capabilities.

In short, there may be a very few *tiny* edge-cases where such a system is the only option but to present this as a viable alternative to traditional water sources for houses or businesses is just a joke.

Never the less, I've seen countless examples of where this very same technology, with the very same unfulfilled promises and carefully omitted costs of operation, have been floated. More often than not, these ventures have gathered millions in investor capital (from rich people who skipped science at high school) and then crashed and burned when the product either never eventuated or failed to deliver on the promises.

Crowdfunding sites such as Indiegogo and Kickstarter are littered with the corpses of "water from air" scams that attracted huge sums and failed to deliver. It seems that PT Barnum was right and that science is a much undervalued subject in our schools.

Be careful out there and always check the science behind any great opportunities that may come your way.

Carpe Diem folks!

Please visit the sponsor!

PERMALINK to this column

Rank This Aardvark Page

Change Font