this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2025
171 points (97.8% liked)
Technology
73379 readers
4145 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
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.