“The Water Roulette”

From Bill Straits Book “The Water Roulette” available on Amazon…  January 1st 2015

...”The likely world leader in this technology is an Australian company, World Environmental Solutions Pty Ltd, who pioneered during what in Australia was labelled the Millennium Drought: a 10-year affair in Australia in the early to mid 2000s. The result was a company that realised making water was desired as drinking water in many cases but the normal method was cost-prohibitive, with electricity costs soaring. One thing was a certain obstacle: the “Watts = Litres” formula. This company today is furthering research and development into its systems of water from the air using minimal power/electricity.

Their water booster (WB) can double the RH at sites where normal operation of an AWG would be inefficient and not advised. That is, the WB can alter 20% RH into 43% RH prior to condensing or 40% RH into 83% RH prior to condensing. (Patent applied for.) This is a real issue for the Sub-Sahara, outback Australia and other arid areas.

The company’s mainstream development was by use of an air-cooled system known as a MultiGen. This consisted of a multi-patented air-cooled absorption chiller and an air cooled AWM operated free from the waste heat of a Turbine or reciprocating generator exhaust. The by-product of this process is to provide cool, air-conditioned air to a space, while making water, all operated from waste energy of an existing Generator, to activate the process they use to operate the condensing cycle. This process dramatically drops the use of electricity by some 95%, as the energy source is waste heat captured.”

 

This particular company has a patented system using Hydro gel filters. These hydro gels can absorb moisture as the air passes through the filter impregnated with Hydrogel substance.  These hydro gels are impregnated into the filter material and absorb moisture as air passed through it; a small amount of electrical power is periodically applied to the filter sub-straight to “desorb” the moisture from the hydro gels. This pulsing effect resulted in water from the air with minimal energy usage. This pulsing system can also be used in front of most AC systems air intake and thus produce water for a very low cost and at very low RH normally necessary for AWG operation. While still in the R&D phase, prototypes are in operation as proof of concept. “

CSIRO News Release - Fishing gear lost at sea globally revealed

 

Fishing line that could wrap around the Earth 18 times is lost in the world’s oceans every year, according to research by CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, and the University of Tasmania. The research published today estimates that nearly two per cent of commercial fishing gear is lost or discarded every year, where it becomes a major component of global marine plastic pollution. Denise Hardesty from CSIRO said this research is the most comprehensive examination of quantitative amounts of abandoned, lost or discarded fishing gear globally to date. “We found that 14 billion longline hooks, 25 million pots and traps and almost 740,000 km of fishing longlines end up in our oceans through global commercial fishing activities each year,” said Dr Hardesty. The research used global fishing effort data and interviews with 450 fishers from seven countries around the world including the USA, Indonesia and Morocco. The surveys looked at five major fishing gear types, how much fishing gear was used and lost annually, and gear and vessel characteristics that could influence losses. In general, more gear was lost from smaller fishing vessels, and bottom trawl fishers lost more net than midwater trawl fishers. The more current estimate presents much lower overall estimates of fishing gear lost at sea than estimates from 2019 which quantified annual gear losses based on literature reviews. To date, empirical information on how much fishing gear is lost to the oceans has been limited. As fishing gear lost at sea has significant economic, environmental and social impacts, this new research will help inform fisheries management and policy interventions from local to global scales. “The data collected to create these estimates came directly from fishers themselves to inform our understanding of fishing gear losses at source,” said Kelsey Richardson, lead author of the paper, previously at CSIRO and University of Tasmania. “There have been increases in global fishing effort, as well as improvements in fishing technologies, including better opportunities to mark, track and recover fishing gears,” Dr Richardson said. “Our updated estimates help to highlight where efforts need to focus to support fisheries management and gear stewardship interventions to generate targeted solutions to reduce fishing gear ending up in our oceans,” she said. This research aligns to CSIRO’s Ending Plastic Waste Mission, which has a goal of an 80 per cent reduction in plastic waste entering the environment by 2030. The research paper is available on the Science Advances webpage.

Tiny House Expo in Brisbane

Our distributor, Polkadot, was at the Tiny House Expo in Brisbane and used 3 x WES 30 L and 1x15 L machines to supply the water generated for use in the lemonade stand adjacent.