A Giant Basket That Uses Condensation to Gather Drinking Water

[Serpo]

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/design/2014/03/warka-01.jpg
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Sand Looks Unbelievably Cool Under a Microscope

(http://www.wired.com/design/2014/03/sand-grains-close-unbelievably-cool/)







Around the world, 768 million people don’t have access to safe water (http://www.unicef.org/wash/), and every day 1,400 children (http://www.unicef.org/esaro/5440_14460.html) under the age of five die from water-based diseases. Designer Arturo Vittori believes the solution to this catastrophe lies not in high technology, but in sculptures that look like giant-sized objects from the pages of a Pier 1 catalog.
His stunning water towers stand nearly 30 feet tall and can collect over 25 gallons of potable water per day by harvesting atmospheric water vapor. Called WarkaWater (http://www.architectureandvision.com/projects/chronological/84-projects/art/492-073-warkawater-2012?showall=&start=1) towers, each pillar is comprised of two sections: a semi-rigid exoskeleton built by tying stalks of juncus or bamboo together and an internal plastic mesh, reminiscent of the bags oranges come in. The nylon and polypropylene fibers act as a scaffold for condensation, and as the droplets of dew form, they follow the mesh into a basin at the base of the structure.

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/design/2014/03/warka-08.jpg (http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/design/2014/03/warka-08.jpg)“WarkaWater is designed to provide clean water as well as ensure long-term environmental, financial and social sustainability,” says designer Arturo Vittori. Photo: Gabriele Rigon

Vittori decided to devote his attention to this problem after visiting northeastern Ethiopia and seeing the plight of remote villagers first hand. “There, people live in a beautiful natural environment but often without running water, electricity, a toilet or a shower,” he says. To survive, women and their children walk for miles to worm-filled ponds contaminated with human waste, collect water in trashed plastic containers or dried gourds, and carry the heavy containers on treacherous roads back to their homes. This process takes hours and endangers the children by exposing them to dangerous illnesses and taking them away from school, ensuring that a cycle of poverty repeats.
Exposure to this horrific scene motivated Vittori to take action. “WarkaWater is designed to provide clean water as well as ensure long-term environmental, financial and social sustainability,” he says. “Once locals have the necessary know how, they will be able to teach others villages and communities to build the WarkaWater towers.” Each tower costs approximately $550 and can be built in under a week with a four-person team and locally available materials.
A more obvious solution to a water shortage would be digging a well, but drilling 1,500 feet into Ethiopia’s rocky plateaus is expensive. Even when a well is dug, maintaining pumps and ensuring a reliable electrical connection makes the proposition unlikely.
http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/design/2014/03/warka-05.jpg (http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/design/2014/03/warka-05.jpg)Though the structure is made from organic material, Vittori designed it using traditional CAD tools. Image: Arturo Vittori

Instead of looking to Western technology for a solution, Vittori was inspired by the Warka tree, a giant, gravity-defying domed tree native to Ethiopia that sprouts figs and is used as a community gathering space. “To make people independent, especially in such a rural context it’s synonymous of a sustainable project and guaranties the longevity,” says Vittori. “Using natural fibers helps the tower to be integrated with the landscape both visually with the natural context as well as with local traditional techniques.”
The design has been two years in the making and though the final product is handcrafted, Vittori has used the same parametric modeling skills honed working on aircraft interiors and solar powered cars to create a solution that is safe and stunning. The 88-pound sculpture is 26-feet wide at its broadest point but swoops dramatically to just a few feet across at its smallest point. Vittori and his team have tested the design in multiple locations and worked in improvements that increase the frame’s stability while simultaneously making it easy for villagers to clean the internal mesh.
Vittori hopes to have two WarkaTowers erected in Ethiopia by 2015 and is looking for financial rainmakers who’d like to seed these tree-inspired structures across the country.




http://www.wired.com/design/2014/03/warka-water-africa/

[Celtic Rogue]

Can someone explain to me how the water that might collect would not evaporate away as it sat there out in the direct sun? It sounds great but I cant see how it actually works.

[Dogman]

Can someone explain to me how the water that might collect would not evaporate away as it sat there out in the direct sun? It sounds great but I cant see how it actually works.

The concept is being used world wide, the ones in the op is more of a working form of "art".

Some are very easy to make, tho not everyone lives in the right climate or areas that the systems would work well. Look at some of the images/pictures of working systems.

https://www.google.com/#q=fog+and+dew+collectors





(https://www.google.com/#q=fog+and+dew+collectors)

[Cebu_4_2]

It drains into chilled self sealing bottles at the bottom, they didn't show them in this article.

[vacuum]

Such a worthless article. It describes nothing other than how much it costs.

How much water does it collect every 24 hours? Is there any reason for it's shape, other than aesthetics? How long does it hold up before it disintegrates from UV exposure?

Obviously it must collect morning dew. The vertical fibers are probably an absorbant material which wicks up the dew, and the vertical height causes the dew to drip out of the bottom because the capilary forces of the wicking material can probably only hold up to an inch of water at most before gravity causes the excess to drip away. If this thing was nothing but 1 inch segments of natural fiber, not connected, then it wouldn't collect anything. But since the fibers run vertically along the structure, the water can wick all the way down and drip off the bottom.

[palani]

Cheaper to construct a dew pond

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6e/Dew_pond_-_west_of_Chanctonbury_Ring.JPG

https://www.google.com/search?q=dew+pond&biw=1143&bih=709&tbm=isch&imgil=WrfLfMptpbv_HM%253A%253Bhttps%253A%252F%252F encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com%252Fimages%253Fq%253Dtbn%253AANd9 GcQE7a7QlMm5h8gmLL9u7k2MmMm6AP8nUuCj-PERxs6Dq8wUjoeH%253B1280%253B1024%253BMTqXzPvdAsRe 7M%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fen.wikipedia.org%2 5252Fwiki%25252FFile%25253ADew_pond_-_west_of_Chanctonbury_Ring.JPG&source=iu&usg=__McgPKBzbXWnDt-65gH3JOR7Tjss%3D&sa=X&ei=teU2U5SKNO2-sQS3oYHYBQ&ved=0CDUQ9QEwAQ#facrc=_&imgrc=WrfLfMptpbv_HM%253A%3BMTqXzPvdAsRe7M%3Bhttp% 253A%252F%252Fupload.wikimedia.org%252Fwikipedia%2 52Fcommons%252F6%252F6e%252FDew_pond_-_west_of_Chanctonbury_Ring.JPG%3Bhttp%253A%252F%25 2Fen.wikipedia.org%252Fwiki%252FFile%253ADew_pond_-_west_of_Chanctonbury_Ring.JPG%3B1280%3B1024

[Ponce]

I don't think that it would work in the middle of the Sahara desert but somewhere near the ocean or a big lake, the moisture has to be drawn from somewhere in order to converted into sweet water.

V

[mick silver]

Dew Harvestinghttp://www.rain-barrel.net/images/dew-harvesting.jpgDew Harvesting is simply taking advantage of water vapor in the atmosphere to harvest clean and potable water through condensation, a passive process that allows water particles to return to the earth in a pure form.
Dew harvesting has been practiced by humanity as far back as ancient times, in areas where rainfall and groundwater resources are scarce. Technically, the process of dew harvesting can be understood by simply analyzing how the water cycle occurs (any fourth grade drawing will do).
When there is any humidity at all in the air and there is a surface that is cool enough to provoke condensation, dew will condense on that surface until the humidity is gone or the surface has absorbed so much heat from the water molecules that the surface is then no longer cool enough to provide the condensing action.
Surface water will evaporate into the atmosphere as soon as enough sunlight heats the molecules enough for them to take gaseous form and these molecules will eventually collect in the atmosphere to create humidity, which will later condense on cold surfaces as dew and thus returning the lost thermal energy to the planet surface.
The water cycle is how our planet keeps its water clean. Warm and humid air with large amounts of humidity take cloud form, and when they hit a cold front from the proper angle, are forced to condense into rain droplets.
This same principle follows for all forms of dew harvesting, to create a cold enough surface that water particles in gaseous form will condense enough to form dew droplets at an angle for collection.
Vegetation in desert regions have developed modifications that allow them to collect their own humidity from the air for example, and through efforts of reforestation in desert regions this technology has advanced abundantly around the world.
Do-it-yourselfers looking to create zero energy homes (http://solar.rain-barrel.net/zero-energy-homes/) are the most trendy examples of dew harvesters to date, with their golf-ball like cardboard and metal roofs that use geothermally cooled water pumped through them at night to bring the roof temperature down enough to harvest dew through their traditional rooftop rainwater harvesting systems.
The biggest advantage to the metal roof technique for dew harvesting is that it simultaneously serves as a passive water heater during sunlight hours as well as a rainwater catchment system and dew harvesting system.
Earlier historical examples include small-scale drinking pools of condensation at the base of plant stems to large-scale natural irrigation practices in areas without rain (like the Namib desert).
Some of the most famous human-made dew harvesting sites include; the stone piles in the Ukraine, dew ponds from southern England and even volcanic stone in the fields of Lanzarote. Collecting dew in a passive manner is an old practice.
Rediscovery of human influence over natural condensation occurred throughout history, from ancient times to medieval to the 20thcentury since which time it has been studied with some interest until recently with renewed interest in sustainability.
Metal roofs, tile roofs with geothermal water-cooling for example can collect enough water to take a bath in most cases. Solar-powered air-moisture harvesting and wind-powered air-moisture harvesting can complement dew harvesting and are currently being tested in Australia.
The International Organization for Dew Utilization (http://www.opur.fr/) uses foil-based condensers for regions where rain or fog cannot are not efficient enough. The secret to dew harvesting in general seems to be the thickness of materials, the thinner materials are, the harder it is for them to retain heat, so thatas soon as the dew has passed down to the collector, most of the leftover heat is dispersed allowing for more dew to condense more rapidly.
The method that will work best might just be a plastic tarp suspended over a barrel with a clothes line for some people, while for others, a fancy first-class metal roof with technological advancements that make all other roofs look old-fashion is the thing.
But dew harvesting is simply the collection of water condensation from cold surfaces either artificially cooled or naturally occurring, and is ideal for conditions where rainfall and groundwater sources are scarce.

[mick silver]

I like this one ...

Fog harvesting

The architects have now built and tested a prototype - a 10 metre square canopy of canvas attached to trees by rope. In this, dew was channelled into a gravity-driven filter and collecting tank hanging from the centre. "In one day we collected more than 20 litres of water," says Cory. They are now developing an improved, portable version with a Dutch company.
The second prototype "will be a properly designed product," says Cory. Poles that snap together are used, so the whole thing can be packed inside the collection tank for carrying. "You can easily transport it that way, and then unpack everything and hang the tank below to start collecting," says Cory.
After winning the competition, Cory and Malka were approached by several companies offering to supply different types of sheet materials for WatAir. They will begin testing the dew-collecting ability of different materials soon.
Frank Lawson, a water engineer at Arup and part-time technical advisor for WaterAid, says fog harvesting has become popular in some mountainous parts of Chile, but dew is not currently harvested for water needs.
"This design has potential wherever the climate is right for a heavy dew fall - the edge of deserts is one example," he says, adding that, to make the most of the idea, "selecting the right material for the canopy is important".
Balloon power

Cory is developing another technology that could prove useful in the developing world - large helium balloons with solar panels attached (see image bottom right). "Using photovoltaic panels requires a lot of surface area, and that can be limited in urban areas where you can only use rooftops," he says.
Along with aerospace engineer Pini Gurfil (http://www.technion.ac.il/~pgurfil/) of the Technion technology institute in Haifa, Israel, Cory is attaching flexible solar panels, normally used to recharge camping equipment, to large helium balloons with a cable that runs back to the ground.
Currently, the 1 metre balloons can only provide 50 watts to power a light bulb, but in future they could do much more. "I imagine whole parks in cities covered with clusters of the balloons," says Cory. "As photovoltaics panels become more efficient this could be a useful way to deploy them." http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/cms/dn12923/dn12923-2_500.jpg

[Serpo]

How much water does it collect every 24 hours? Is there any reason for it's shape, other than aesthetics? How long does it hold up before it disintegrates from UV exposure?

.

can collect over 25 gallons of potable water per day

[Serpo]

Can someone explain to me how the water that might collect would not evaporate away as it sat there out in the direct sun? It sounds great but I cant see how it actually works.


collect the water in the morning