this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2026
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/59925291

The system can function in air with 20% humidity or less. But these 1,000 liter a day machines are not small, at around shipping container size.

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[–] Hi_ImSomeone@lemmy.world 12 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

I used to work for a company making a similar device, the chemistry behind the technology is actually a well researched topic, and there are many kinds of various chemistries that can achieve a similar effect. Silica gel packets are the most common, a cheap solution that extracts moisture from the air, but is non-reusable.

These MOF compounds are useful because they have a fundamentally different method of collecting the water molecules. The framework traps the molecules inside, which can be later released with heat. Thermal solar power is free, but does require careful management of the rest of the device such that the material can get hot enough (usually around 100c), which also providing another surface to condense the vapour. I spent alot of time designing and testing such panels. They do work! I can post pictures of fishtanks of water later.

There truly couldn't be much of a downside to these technologies. The real alternative is desalination, which produces hyper concentrated salt pools, or well water extraction, which is also bad...

The reason these technologies is usually due to the cost effectiveness to produce the material, and to build the enclosure around the material. The panels have to scale very large to get any reasonable about of solar power, plus the condensing and collecting mechanisms also add weight and cost. Water is not an expensive product, so at the end of the day, the economics don't always work out favourably.

Happy to answer any questions about the technology.

[–] PapaStevesy@lemmy.world 2 points 24 minutes ago

There truly couldn’t be much of a downside to these technologies.

What you mean to say is "We don't know what the downside will be untill these technologies are implemented and used for a long time and then studied." Otherwise you sound like the well-intentioned-but-unhinged chemist that accidentally starts the zombie apocalypse at the beginning of the movie.

[–] Nomorereddit@lemmy.today 1 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 19 minutes ago)

More of the same huh? Heres how it goes in 6 steps:

1 Draft marketing plan 2 go public w/some shares for sale 3 Announce prototype and launch marketing strategy (ie plaster Nobel laureates name all over the product and drop adds on social media) 4 drive market value up 5 sell shares and get rich 6 you've sold out and gotten rich, company dissolves because it was all a hype machine. (Not a real solution machine, or it'd have sold those real solution machines instead of purchasing ad space.)

Replace w crypto currency if u wish. Same lies.

[–] WanderWisley@lemmy.world 3 points 4 hours ago

Where’s my noble peace prize for blowing up kids in an Iranian school? 🫲🍊🫱

[–] Tattorack@lemmy.world 14 points 7 hours ago

So... Another dehumidifier... We've been over this before.

Many times.

Many many times.

[–] pineapplelover@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

I wonder if these guys realize that if you suck up all moisture from the air, it will be pretty dry and you will need the same amount of water to replace the water you displaced

[–] Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 9 points 4 hours ago

I am guessing they are aware how their machine works. Air isn't usually stagnant, if you have moving air that means moisture is replacing it.

[–] vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works 5 points 6 hours ago

If people keep reinventing the fucking dehumidifier I'm going to start beating these dipshits bloody. Or maybe I should just collect the old beater ones I see at estate and yard sales to make YouTube videos making fun of them. Regardless this is barely worth praise for an amateur engineering project let alone a nobel prize.

[–] sveltecider@lemmy.world 20 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

I’m always extremely skeptical of stuff like this

[–] Rooster326@programming.dev 5 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

As you should be

Until the device is deployed in at least a few real live locations

[–] fenrasulfr@lemmy.world 2 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

I wpnder how this will impact the environment.

[–] zephiriz@lemmy.ml 5 points 3 hours ago

It would be cheeper and easier and less energy intensive to load a truck up with water and drive it to where you need it.

[–] zephiriz@lemmy.ml 12 points 13 hours ago

How many times do we have to fall for this garbage. Well I guess if your doing it to scam dumb rich people be my guest, but this shit is dumb.

https://youtu.be/OfmQcY_sEt0

[–] cout970@programming.dev 19 points 16 hours ago

Oh no, the same scam again, when will people realize that putting dehumidifiers in the desert, where there is little to none humidity in the air does not produce significant quantities of water.

You can claim that your solution produces thousands of liters of water, but in practice its obvious that you cannot extract more water than what's already im the air, once you extract it, there is nothing left, it may work at first, but is not going to work continuously forever.

This is another example of a promised technology scam, pay me for the development and once it doesn't work, disappear with the money. People keep falling for it for some reason.

[–] Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world 0 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

Doesn't SoCal sometimes have negative humidity? 20% seems pretty high to say it works in the desert.

[–] KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 4 hours ago

It really comes down to what you mean by humidity. “Dew point” can be negative, but humidity cannot.

“Negative humidity” is like saying “this glass has so little water in it, it has negative water”.

[–] pulsey@feddit.org 12 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Humidity cant be below zero, it measure how much water is in the air.

I think technically what we call humidity is actually relative humidity, so it can go below zero. Ture humidity can't of course.

[–] TigerAce@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 points 18 hours ago

There have been so many of these devices promoted in Kickstarter, dragons den, etc.

I'm highly sceptical, as so far scientists have told me there simply isn't that much moist in the desert air to get even one liter of clean water per day. You simply cannot create water out of nothing.

[–] GenosseFlosse@feddit.org 32 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

This has been debunked before. To get 1000liter of water out of the air, the air needs to hold that much water.

[–] Slashme@lemmy.world 35 points 16 hours ago

This is a bit more serious than the old, frequently-debunked "dehumidifier in the desert" stuff, because it doesn't depend on cooling the air to get the water out, but using a molecular sponge. If you pump enough air over that, you'll eventually fill it up, and you can drive the water out by heating it up.

The guy behind this is a serious organic chemist, and his Nobel prize was actually for pioneering and developing these molecules, so it's not a case of "Nobel prize winner does daft stuff about a subject he's not an expert in", either.

I'm still reserving judgement on whether this will be economically sensible, but I'm not dismissing it immediately, either.

[–] kalkulat@lemmy.world 7 points 15 hours ago

Here's a back-up, science paper on MOF from Nature with measured numbers. 8 liters per KG per day isn't 1000 gallons until you get to 2 tons ... but it's about 200 liters per out of 25 KG ... easily carried.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-58405-9

"The effects of temperature, relative humidity, and powder bed thickness on the adsorption-desorption process are explored for achieving optimal operational parameters. We found that Zr-MOF-808 can produce up to 8.66 LH2O kg−1MOF day−1, an extraordinary finding that outperforms any previously reported values for MOF-based systems.... "

[–] homes@piefed.world 27 points 23 hours ago (2 children)
[–] OhStopYellingAtMe@lemmy.world 4 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (1 children)

My aunt and uncle
Double suns
And sippin’ blue milk.

[–] homes@piefed.world -1 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

Not a drop to split

Not a drop to SPIT

WTF, it was right there!!

cmon…

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[–] 69420@lemmy.world 207 points 1 day ago (6 children)

Finally, I can achieve my dreams of becoming a moisture farmer.

[–] Rakonat@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

Gonna head to Tashi Station every week?

[–] mushroommunk@lemmy.today 75 points 1 day ago (11 children)

Hope you enjoy a whiny nephew

[–] wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 2 points 13 hours ago

He gets it from his father

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[–] MolochHorridus@lemmy.ml 45 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (7 children)

Yet again, nobody seems to be giving a thought what this means to organisms that are living in the desert. This water is necessary for life and we’re taking it.

[–] FauxLiving@lemmy.world 56 points 1 day ago (1 children)

As someone who has thought about it, could you provide the data that you used to come to the conclusion that the amount of water being extracted from the air has any appreciable effect on local life?

From my thinking...

Death Valley covers 7800km^2.. Atmospheric moisture is typically contained in the first 10km of air. So there is somewhere around 2.5 quadrillion cubic feet of air containing 114 billion gallons of water.

The average Atmospheric Water Vapour Residence Time is around 8 days The median is 5 days and Death Valley's topography is a valley which would trap more moisture, but we'll use the average instead.

This represents a moisture turnover rate of about 625,000 Liters/second (or 1.45x10^10 gallons/day).

So, one of these devices would consume .000185% of the moisture that enters Death Valley every day.

[–] besmtt@lemmy.world 11 points 20 hours ago (1 children)
[–] FiskFisk33@startrek.website 11 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

ground water is a completely different beast. This device harvests moisture from the air.

[–] KaChilde@sh.itjust.works 10 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

You are assuming that there will only be one device used by a careful and considerate individual.

I can think of many companies that would 100000% set up a moisture farming complex if it was financially feasible. Who gives a fuck about the environment? It’s basically free water from nothing, right?

[–] FauxLiving@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

Nobody is deploying these at scale to harvest water to sell, it's way too expensive. Probably even more so than desalination.

These kinds of devices would be useful in areas where they didn't have access to preexisting infrastructure. There the comparison would be between operating one of these devices or air lifting water in by helicopter. The fact that it's expensive isn't as much a concern when the alternative is to pay for airlift delivery.

[–] besmtt@lemmy.world 1 points 12 hours ago

You say that like this is news to me. 🙄

[–] Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 9 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (2 children)

If you plan on drinking the water, or cooking with the water, it's going right back into the air after you pee or sweat and the water evaporates. Literally no damage done.

You cannot make the water actually disappear unless you use it in some kind of chemical reaction, and even then it may end up returning to water eventually.

[–] KaChilde@sh.itjust.works 14 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

I would think that ripping 1000L of water out of an environment in a day is going to have more immediate impacts than you eventually pissing on a cactus is going to fix…

Sure, the water isn’t “destroyed”, but it is being removed from an ecosystem that has evolved to use every last bit of water it can find to survive. It may not be immediately obvious, but it sounds just as damaging as removing 1000L of water a day from a lake and thinking the ecosystem will be fine because you’re going to sweat next to the dry lakebed.

[–] Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 5 points 12 hours ago

I would think that ripping 1000L of water out of an environment in a day is going to have more immediate impacts than you eventually pissing on a cactus is going to fix…

Well... It all depends on what you do with the water. Are you sequestering it in some way or are you releasing it? I mean, if the community drank 1000 liters of water, then their next piss is 100% going to fix it. Even watering crops is just releasing the water.

just as damaging as removing 1000L of water a day from a lake and thinking the ecosystem will be fine because you’re going to sweat next to the dry lakebed.

Again, if you're going to sweat 1000 liters, then go for it, I fully endorse this plan. Use as much water as you want, it's fine unless you're shipping it out.

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[–] Eccowave@feddit.org 72 points 1 day ago (2 children)
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[–] HowAbt2day@futurology.today 57 points 1 day ago (8 children)

That water was in its way to somewhere, though. What is that other area gonna look like now that this device intercepts the water?

[–] Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 13 hours ago

They won't probably export the water to europe or something.

I mean it's not Nestle.

[–] chunes@lemmy.world 8 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

same could be said about every shower you take and every toilet you flush

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