The prize money of about 200 million yen 'How to turn air into water' grand prize is decided, the idea of ​​'create clouds in the shipping container and take out the water'



In the year 2016, a prize for the contest " Water Abundance XPRIZE " aimed at helping people around the world suffering from water shortages "a way to create water from the air" was decided. A grand prize winner who received a prize of 1.5 million dollars (about 170 million yen) designed a device that "creates clouds in the shipping container and creates drinking water".

The Water Abundance XPRIZE winner makes water from air
https://www.fastcompany.com/90253718/a-device-that-can-pull-drinking-water-from-the-air-just-won-the-latest-x-prize

Visioneering | XPRIZE
https://www.xprize.org/visioneering




"XPRIZE" contest that designs a device that produces 2000 liters of water per day from the air under the condition of "using clean energy" and "cost 2 cents per liter of water to produce" (about 2.25 yen) It started in 2016.

Zenia Tata, Chief Impact Officer for XPRIZE said, "When we began designing XPRIZE's challenges, we thought of many first principles." In the present age, nearly 8 million people are faced with water shortage, but seawater desalination that produces freshwater from seawater is problematic in that "cost is too costy" and the water that can be produced can only be provided in the vicinity of the system There is a problem that it is limited to. XPRIZE 's team thought about the design of the contest came to think that "It might be possible to make resources as" atmosphere "including a lot of water. Although there was a device called "take water out of the air" at that time, it was said that a lot of expenses were necessary to use it. Whether this task could be realized was considered skeptical at the time.

A new system called "WEDEW" that won the grand prize was completed by combining the existing two systems. One of them is a device called "Skywater" that mimics the mechanism of forming a cloud of "creating steam by warming the air and matching cold air". This water vapor is stored in a tank and it can be provided as drinking water.

PRODUCTS - SkyWater Air Water Machines
https://islandsky.com/



However, since the above method uses a lot of electricity, designers decided to combine it with a gasifier using biomass . Materials are thermally decomposed when materials such as wood chips and coconut shells are placed in the equipment, which can become biomass of the land. At this time, the system creates a heat and humidity environment, it is possible to turn air into water. The device is designed to be placed in a shipping container, so that the container in the container gathers water. At the same time biochar is also produced, it is said that it can be used as a fertilizer to increase the yield of crops.

David Hertz, an architect who worked on XPRIZE's project, said, "This is a technology that makes carbon dioxide balance negative," "The technology of the future is to restore damage to the environment we have created, I think that it will become such a model that makes it possible to do. "

The above device is expected to be driven by sunlight and batteries, not biomass, where there are not enough trees. In this form, it is possible to develop it instantly even in places where water shortage and places where water is contaminated.

There are places where equipment using Skywater's technology alone is already located, but the equipment using biomass was designed for the contest. The development team is using the prize money to partner with NPO and use it for arranging equipment around the world and accelerating development.

Related Posts:

in Hardware,   Science, Posted by darkhorse_log