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Biking cross-country through rough terrain may mean that access to fresh, drinkable water may be limited. But what if there was a device that could "pull" moisture from the air and transform it into drinking water? That's the idea behind Austrian designer Kristof Retezár's Fontus, a "self-filling" water bottle that can make water out of thin air.
The solar-powered bike accessory uses a Peltier Element to generate water. It's essentially a cooler with two chambers that facilitates condensation, and takes in air as the bike moves, which is then slowed and cooled down by barriers that allows it to condense and form water, which is channelled and collected in the bottle.
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"Self-Filling" Biking Bottle Pulls Water Out of Thin Air
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Everything you know is wrong!
(Score: 3, Informative) by TheRaven on Friday July 31 2015, @08:34AM
the gadget can produce 0.5 liters of water in an hour, and works best when temperatures are around 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees Fahrenheit) and humidity is around 50 percent
0.5l of water per hour sounds like quite a lot to condense from air, but if it works then it's pretty neat.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 4, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday July 31 2015, @08:47AM
A workaround would be for me to sleep during the day then ride at night, which I prefer anyway.
But even so the desert humidity is so low that leaving the gadget running all day long might not yield joy.
My plan has been to carefully map out all my water sources well ahead of time but my concern is that there may not be enough in some of the deserts I plan to pass through on my way to visit Andy Green [em.net] in Zihuatenejo, on Mexico's southern Pacific coast. (I am in Vancouver, Washington.)
Before I pull that stunt I will ride to Burning Man and back. That's in the Black Rock desert near Gehrlach, in North-West Nevada. It's not so far from here but that part of Nevada is quite dry during Burning Man's time of the year. There are lots of places to obtain water when coming north from Reno, but not when coming south from Idaho or East from Oregon.
One of the most wonderful nights of all my life, I went camping in the eastern Sierra Nevada foothills just South-West of Reno.
But I didn't tell my Mom, I just decided to take off and to go camping, so she filed a Missing or Endangered Person report. That resulted in my being held involuntarily for ten days in the Northern Nevada Psychiatric Center because I told a psychiatrist that I planned "to go camping in the desert".
In Reno, that's a local euphemism for "committing suicide".
I found it unproductive to point out that I wasn't from Reno.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 31 2015, @08:49AM
well, with humidity at 50% it's not extraordinary. 50% at 20 C is at the upper limit of pleasant, any higher and it's "humid" (at least that's about what my thermometer says).
in any case, it would be a great thing to have, I'm not complaining.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 31 2015, @02:37PM
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday July 31 2015, @02:29PM
0.5l/h is not a lot to condense from air, once you factor in the biker's sweat :D
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Friday July 31 2015, @08:02PM
Uh, most of the world does not regularly experience 50% humidity and 20 C conditions.
Basically, this is a dehumidifier in a bottle. Plug one in and see for yourself how much water the air in your area is capable of producing (perhaps divide by a constant factor of 2 to simulate efficiency loss from size).
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