this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2025
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These are called dehumidifiers and you should not drink the water that comes out of them.
The condensed water is pure, yes. But dehumidifiers almost instantly become a breeding ground for all kinds of nasty shit. Nasty shit that is now in your ‘pure’ water.
Edit: It's the same problem as the WaterSeer which is also a passive dehumidifier. This same idea comes up several times a year, yet you don't see them deployed in quantity anywhere. They simply don't work well. (The WaterSeer actually seems like a better design than what is in OP's article.)
There are plenty ways to purify water once it's been obtained
Absolutely. And that is the problem you actually need to solve in the places lacking potable water. They generally have some water, it just isn't potable. Filters need regular replacing, additives like chlorine need constant resupply, and reverse osmosis is extremely energy intensive. It's fundamentally a logistics problem.
If you're concerned with bacterial growth in the condensate of a dehumidifier, all you need to do is boil it
There's such a thing as botulism ; so - once the toxin causing it has formed, it doesn't matter that you kill the bacteria that produced it with boiling the water. The toxin itself survives much harsher conditions.
I think it's not the only danger which you haven't considered here.
Y'all, we're talking about condensate from a device specifically designed to capture water for drinking. We're not talking about drinking the water dripping from your AC. Ensuring this water is drinkable is remarkably simple.
Not only that, but Clostridium botulinum only grows in anaerobic environments, so it isn't even a remote concern in this case. That's why you don't hear about it much outside of canned food or instances where it's purposefully cultivated for medical applications.
Well, if this idea is so glorious, why is none of the large array of water harvesting devices that pop up multiple times a year ever deployed at scale?
Easy answer: because they are all marketing bullshit that doesn't solve the actual problem and instead only exists to part investors from their cash.
Really?
The waterseeer was an outright scam that never would have worked because physics, yet collecting millions in funding. And that wasn't the first on either
This one is no difference, it's a scam.
Read the article. No electricity required. Uses outside air. Not really a "dehumidifier" unless you want to play strange pedantics. Just like a water filter, you probably wouldn't suck on the filter element
Means this dehumidifier produces even less water than the standard powered dehumidifier.
Will breed even nastier shit in the water than one inside a building.
You know absolutely nothing about what makes water drinkable or how we as a society have already solved this problem
"Pure" is not a good thing when talking about water. Your body relies on minerals dissolved in drinking water. Also, water is a powerful solvent and if it isnt already saturated with minerals it will absorb calcium right out of your bones