How Solar Powered Machines are Making Free Water in the Sahara Desert

In the Sahara a breakthrough technology is emerging for drought solutions...

The Sahara is one of the hottest places on Earth, and is considered the largest hot desert in the world, its an extremely harsh environment receiving less than 1 inch of rain every year.

Despite this 2.5 million inhabitants live within the Sahara, making it one of the least densely populated places on Earth with less than 1 person per square mile, however the desert is advancing.

The Sahara spans across 10 countries and is expanding southward at a rate of 48 km a year, further degrading the land and eradicating the already scarce livelihoods of populations. It is now encroaching on more populated areas within the Sahel region, where 44 million people live. It is said to be 10 percent larger than it was a century ago.

In this region temperatures are rising faster than anywhere else on Earth and since the 1970s it has been affected by severe droughts. This has come at a huge cost: land degradation is currently estimated at about $490bn per year, which is much higher than the cost of action to prevent it.

The Sahara desert is just one example across the world of how our deserts are advancing, and how global climate change is affecting these areas negatively. Its estimated that more than one billion people, one-eighth of the Earth's population, actually live in desert regions and the livelihoods of a further 1 billion people in some 100 countries are threatened by desertification.

Desertification refers to the land degradation in arid, semi-arid and sub-humid areas resulting from various factors, including climatic variations and human activities. When land degradation happens in the world's drylands, it often creates desert-like conditions.

Drylands take up 41.3% of the land surface and up to 44% of all the world's cultivated systems are in the drylands. Water scarcity is the gap between the demand for water and it’s supply, in dry-lands there is a high demand for water despite their being a lack of supply. Water scarcity it is said to affect between 1-2 billion people, most of them living in the drylands.

It is estimated that nearly half of the world's population in 2030 will be living in areas of high water stress and it could displace up to 700 million people. It is for this reason innovators across the world are trying to turn this around.

In this video we will show you how the first ever off grid water production machine is creating water from thin air in the desert, this breakthrough technology is on the forefront of drought solutions helping provide free water for billions of people living in dry land across the world….

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#greeningthedesert
#watershortage

[See_Sharp]

Its basically Peltier device, similar tech used on cheap portable dehumidifiers. It can collect water but at a very slow rate, even in humid area.

[mikethespike]

Not wanting to be a wet blanket here, but I've seen at least 3 projects claiming to be able to extract enough water from air in very dry parts of the world to make a difference and they all eventually went quiet and disappeared.
Thunderfoot's channel has addressed one or two of these solutions and explained the physics behind why they never manage to extract enough water to make a difference.
I'm also not sure that these machines would withstand the conditions in a desert environment such as the Sahara for long. For instance, one sand storm could bury them for good or at least render them inoperable. And finding someone reliable who understands the importance of taking care of these things will be a big problem. People in the Sahara usually only see advantage in work that offers them personal direct benefit (not really that different to the west). The concept that an occupation is worth doing for free because it benefits others as well is not going to motivate many people. There would therefore have to be some re-enumeration system that finances and guarantees supervision.

[cliffwoodbury]

growing 30 miles a year. The world needs to come together and revert the Sarahs growth

[DeirdreYoung]

How many times does Thunderfoot have to debunk this stuff? These thing are simple dehumidifiers, and they work best where there is a lot of humidity in the air... ie, not the desert.

[b_uppy]

Can we talk about placing mangroves along the coastal areas around Sahara to increase transpiration?

High tech solutions are a degenerative system of diminishing returns.

And yet those farmers are still in using the most degenerative land practices in the world there, but lets ignore that. Just like were ignoring it here.

[Petch]

Is it due to reliability that they are using peltier elements, cause they are not very efficient, but they might be more reliable than a compressor.
I must say I am very skeptical of this project, I hope they have thought this through.

[Ankh-hewi]

Engineers should develop a dew collection system instead since nights are so cool/humid

[drgeoffangel]

As a retired mechanical engineer I have used Peltier devices for cooling in my designs. The degree of success that any water from air project is reliant on, is the system design, and detail design . The biggest problem facing this technology is how up scaleable is it, vs cost of a large scale plant. In the poorest regions, where a scaled up system could be most useful, but also where there are no large amounts of money either to afford one. No peltiers are not the solution here. What is needed is a system that can be made locally, using local materials and very low technology being involved. I believe that a very large tent like structure, with air slats, and a central shaft that is dug down deep in the sand, and umbrellar type steel u type columns that go back down and meet the central column will work, using natural condensation. The idea is that under the Blacken out tent, the condensate is created by the intense heat in the tent, and during the night the water droplets that have formed on the metal u shaped channels, run down into the central water collector which is cooled in a large underground tank. The water can be pumped up to the surface using a simple mechanical lift pump. The desert sun which can make air temperatures reach 45 degree celsius in the day, will provide the energy, the greenhouse type tent will capture the moisture, and the coolness of the night will allow the condensate to collect underground. Something long these lines, is a more practical way of extracting moiture from the air.

[serkiznatz]

Imagine if we humans stopped fighting wars for borders and spent all those trillions on improving the earths health.

[DumbSkippy]

Peltier cooling is energy intensive and inefficient. It relies on temperature differential. Putting an aluminium/copper heatsink, in full sun, isn't going to dump heat very well at all.
Perhaps if the solar panel charges a battery then it may dump enough heat at night, with a certain Dew Point. Oh and it is R/H (relative humidity), not, repeat NOT absolute humidity.
I worked for Carrier . I've done university on all of this, including electrical engineering!

[JORDAN]

Does this remind anyone else of the moister farm from Star Wars?

[lextrombas]

Treating the symptoms but not the cause. land degradation should be reversed. Farmers need to be taught how to work with the land. Recarbonisation, growing trees and grasses etc. I have seen in northern Botswana how this land degradation has destroyed forests and ancient migratory routes for elephants because the government encouraged peasant farmers to grow their food in a country that is not suitable for farming. It is sacrilege what has happened. The desert in Botswana will soon encroach on what used to be pristine forests.

[aquahara]

The machines presented in this video are very inefficient dehumidifiers. They produce very little water when the air is dry (like in the desert) and need a very large solar panel surface area, making this water extremely expensive. We agree with the debunking videos of Thunderf00t. Still, our company Aquahara is testing a more efficient process, which produces 2 liters of water per day per square meter of solar collectors under dry desert conditions. This is still expensive, but the technology is evolving and getting more cost-effective over time, just like with the photovoltaic industry 10 years ago.

[Endymion]

i'd like to see a cost analysis of getting water this way vs long distance irrigations and piping with and without desalinization plants. e.g. how much is a galllon of water produced through this solar method vs a gallon produced through irrigation methods.

[drzenkobilas]

Italy used cardboard placed in a trough of sea water in a long green house, sunlight cause the water to evaporate and then at night the condensate settles on the glass and runs into a trough and is now salt free distilled.

[dumbcat]

sun power > charges solar panels (or creates steam from sea water by passing sun through fresnel lenses) > runs electric water pumps > pumps salt water from ocean > to solar water distillation plants > fresh water carried to arid regions by canals + solar (or steam) powered water pumps > water feeds trees > microclimates created > clouds form above trees > rain falls

[shake]

if a 100 kw unit per month costs 10k to buy and has a 20 year lifespan then it will produce 300 liter per month or 3600 per year or 720, 000 over a 20 year span. that means you are paying 1.38 cents per liter ($10, 000/720, 000). that’s not terrible but it needs to get 100x cheaper as water costs about $.0001, not $.0138

[fredrossman]

Straight from Dune. I like your positive attitude and forward thinking.

[mattski]

Permaculture permaculture permaculture.

[futureproof.health]

Just what desert dwellers need! A dehumidifier! Act now! No. The air is DRY. so very little water in the air. Every few years people rediscover dehumidifiers. Thing is dehumidifiers in dry air can't capture much. Sunblaze. Whatever _ there is no science that makes water condense when there is no water to. Condense. Desalination is cheaper. More work is needed. The maximum efficiency is hard to believe that some breakthrough changes thermodynamics. It's a good way to raise a lot of cash. It is the perennial dream.