"Air is taken in through vents in the nose cone of the turbine and then heated by a generator to make steam. The steam goes through a cooling compressor that creates moisture which is then condensed and collected."
Um what?? Why are they heating air? And you don't make steam if you heat air.
That's either a huge typo, or whoever wrote that has no idea what they are talking about. Maybe they tried to summarize the source without understanding it?
You could either cool the air to condense the water, or compress the air, which heats it temporarily, then you cool it back down and collect the water. It's ideal to recover the energy either way though and this process doesn't seem to do that.
And in any case what does this have to do with a wind turbine? This is basically a de-humidifyer. You can power those with anything - wind, electricity, gasoline.
I suggest they use the wind turbine to make electricity, and then power the de-humidifyer from that. That way you can pick and choose what you want to power, and you can power the de-humidifyer from something else when necessary.
BTW the link they have on the words "simple process" in fact has nothing whatsoever to do with this process. Who writes this stuff? Someone who never learned any science?
Forget the stupid writing in the article. The reason why they may be using the wind turbine directly is if they're using mechanical energy to fire the compressors, etc to run the process.
Compression of the intake air is likely best served mechanically. Cooling the air could be served mechanically, although an air conditioning compressor is likely better designed to run electrically, but again it depends on the scale used to determine if mechanical would be better or not.
Although I'm wondering if the compressed air itself could be used to power the condenser. If the air is compressed enough, would an appropriate design allow the expansion of the compressed air to cool the condenser it's escaping from? Because I know air compressors for air tools build up water inside, and they are purposefully designed to inhibit this.
Also the reverse-osmosis, or whatever filtration used, is likely best served by producing the water and letting it filter down through gravity pressure under the 30+ft drop from the unit to the holding tank.
Although, it would be more ideal to produce say 200L a day and produce energy too so that a few of these would provide water and electricity to a village and everyone won't die when their water producing turbine breaks down and takes a month to get repaired.
> The reason why they may be using the wind turbine directly is if they're using mechanical energy to fire the compressors, etc to run the process.
The gearing would make this too complicated. A compressor wants a constant force, with a varying speed. But a turbine produces a varying force. (This can be adjusted somewhat by angling the blades, but not enough.) Older turbines run at a constant speed, the extra force allows more electricity to be generated. Newer ones are more complicated running at varying speeds. But in both cases the force varies, which would not work for a compressor.
You don't need to both compress the air, and refrigerate it - it's either/or.
If you compress the air, the cooling is just ambient cooling. A way to capture that energy is pretty important. It would be easy to capture the energy in the compression of the air, but once you cool it the pressure drops which is a waste. Maybe dump the heat after the expansion to increase the pressure of the air before using it?
The gearing of this system would be pretty complicated - you have energy from the turbine, then energy from the compressed air releasing. I guess a differential gear would work.
Refrigeration is a lot simpler in some ways (after condensing the water, use the cold to help cool the hot side) but designing a refrigeration pump to run at varying speed is really hard. And varying force is no good either.
You don't need reverse osmosis for the filtration - the water is quite clean, it just has some dust in it which a simple filter could handle. May be easier to filter the air instead.
> You don't need reverse osmosis for the filtration - the water is quite clean, it just has some dust in it which a simple filter could handle. May be easier to filter the air instead.
I was thinking the same when I read the article. I assumed they didn't intend to filter the air because an air filter may become clogged by sand particulate - especially in a sand storm. I said reverse osmosis for the filter, merely because this setup is actually well suited for it, and if these turn out to be mass produced (hopefully cheaper for more litres of water a day) that they may become used in more urban areas where pollution is a bigger factor. It would also make bacterial contamination less of a concern as mild chlorination of the holding tanks would likely make a long term potable water source with low maintenance.
However, the advantage of compressing over refrigerating is that the compressed air could be vented to periodically clean any air filters. It's important that these turbines be very low maintenance if they're to be installed in remote areas. A self-cleaning air filter and a simple water filter might be ideal.
It seems they are quoting an article from rechargenews.com [1] which erroneously adds this "steam before condensation" stage.
Reading the skimpy tech specs of the "WMS1000 Wind Turbine" from the company itself [2], it only lists the following stages:
Energy production -> Ambient air suction -> Humid air condensation -> Water production -> Water purification -> Pure drinking water distribution
----
Ensuring the water is airborne pathogen free would be a big issue for me which I am sure they must have thought of.
"Eole chief executive Marc Parent dreamed up the concept in the 1990s while working as an engineer in the Caribbean, where he had been reducing his bottled water costs by siphoning the condensation from his air conditioner."
I hope he boiled this water here first. This is the exact method used by new airborne pathogen detectors to collect virus and bacteria samples :/
I think that this is just a generator driving a standard de-humidifier. The compressor is compressing -refrigerant-, not the air. The refrigerant expands into a cooling coil, which chills the air and condenses out any moisture.
This is just like the dehumidifier that you use in your basement, only out in the desert somewhere and attached to a wind turbine. I'm not sure why you would do this instead of just capturing the power. Perhaps because if you're installing this in the desert, power transmission could be difficult, whereas the water could be collected in a holding tank at the base and used locally?
I gave up trying to correct treehugger after they featured the concept shower that would be heated from electricity generated from piezos capturing vibration from the flow of water pumped through the pipes.
Um what?? Why are they heating air? And you don't make steam if you heat air.
That's either a huge typo, or whoever wrote that has no idea what they are talking about. Maybe they tried to summarize the source without understanding it?
You could either cool the air to condense the water, or compress the air, which heats it temporarily, then you cool it back down and collect the water. It's ideal to recover the energy either way though and this process doesn't seem to do that.
And in any case what does this have to do with a wind turbine? This is basically a de-humidifyer. You can power those with anything - wind, electricity, gasoline.
I suggest they use the wind turbine to make electricity, and then power the de-humidifyer from that. That way you can pick and choose what you want to power, and you can power the de-humidifyer from something else when necessary.
BTW the link they have on the words "simple process" in fact has nothing whatsoever to do with this process. Who writes this stuff? Someone who never learned any science?