Turning air into water? Gadget does just that

Bryn Nelson Columnist

Remember those sweltering summer days when the air was so muggy you could practically drink it? A new home appliance is promising to make that possible by converting outdoor air into nearly 13 quarts of fresh water every day.

Originally envisioned as an antidote to the shortage of clean drinking water in the world, the WaterMill has the look of a futuristic air conditioner and the ability to condense, filter and sterilize water for about 3 cents per quart.

At $1,299, the 45-pound device doesn’t come cheap, and it is neither the first nor the biggest machine to enter the fast-growing field of atmospheric water generators. But by targeting individual households with a self-cleaning, environmentally friendly alternative to bottled water, Kelowna, British Columbia-based Element Four is hoping its WaterMill will become the new must-have appliance of 2009.

“The idea is making this thing intelligent,” said Jonathan Ritchey, inventor of the original WaterMill prototype and president of Element Four. “So what happens is the machine knows where it is. If you put it in a rainforest, it will sample that environment every three minutes, and it will adapt.” Ditto for a desert. That adaptation, he said during a November preview at Manhattan’s WIRED Store, is critical for energy efficiency.

Element Four Jonathan Ritchey, inventor of the WaterMill prototype, points out the inner workings of the machine. Among its features, the unit boasts an activated carbon filter that literally tells the consumer when it needs to be changed.

Cooling the machine’s condensation chamber to just below the dew point, or the temperature at which the air becomes saturated with water vapor and begins to condense, is central to the process.

“If I have a dumb machine, it might bring the air down to just three degrees above dew point and I wouldn’t get any water,” Ritchey said.

“If I take the air way below the dew point, I’m using what’s called latent heat. It’s sort of like taking an ice cube and trying to freeze it some more. You’re just wasting your energy.”

The unit’s activated carbon filter offers another feature not found on most appliances.

“We’ve actually designed a system that knows when the filter is spent and will tell you, the consumer, ‘Time to change the filter, time to change the filter,’ Ritchey said. “And then if you don’t, we’ve got it dummy-proofed. It will shut itself down. Either you change the filter, and it makes pure water, or it doesn’t make water at all.”

Microbes are another big concern in water coolers, hot water tanks, industrial-sized air conditioning units and other places where water vapor can become contaminated.

The WaterMill was designed to overcome that issue with a self-sterilizing condensation chamber that boasts a reflective wall surrounding its condensation coil. During the machine’s daily sterilization cycle, UV light ricochets off the wall and efficiently sterilizes both the front and back sides of the coil.

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