Re:Bill Gates-led $1B energy fund expands startup portfolio ...
by stcredzero on Wednesday September 26, 2018 @01:46PM
(#18078443)
Instead, they use a sophisticated absorbent to selectively capture water, heat it to release the water, then sterilize and add minerals.
So it's using a dessicant? Heating a saturated dessicant in an enclosed environment can produce a hot, high humidity environment where dehumidification is easy. That said, it will still produce the most water someplace like San Francisco, where the humidity is high. There are places where humidity is high and the rainfall is very low.
Apparently, Zero Mass Water is using some good engineering to get something like a 4X efficiency increase for water extraction over existing commercial dessicant dehumidifiers. It's possible that removing the requirement to process large volumes of air could produce such an efficiency increase.
Re:Bill Gates-led $1B energy fund expands startup portfolio ...
by debatem1 on Wednesday September 26, 2018 @02:13PM
(#18078705)
Stupid question, is this targeted at producing water or is it targeted at producing clean water where contaminated water is available?
Re:Bill Gates-led $1B energy fund expands startup portfolio ...
by stcredzero on Wednesday September 26, 2018 @04:25PM
(#18079927)
It's targeted at producing water by extracting it from the air.
But you're right. It's the company that I was most surprised to see in the list. The economics don't yet make sense to me.
I pushed Carmichael Roberts (BEV's head of investing) to explain. He said he has studied water startups for years, and he really likes the tech. But more importantly, he is very impressed by Cody's skill to sell this unit and far wide. It's already in 16 countries.