anyone have a clue as to the electricity cost per liter for a home sized model?

44 minutes ago, gabriel said:

anyone have a clue as to the electricity cost per liter for a home sized model?

Your best bet is probably to look at a marine water maker. Looks like it's around 5k for a small hand-operated unit to 50k for the kind of thing you'd put in a yacht. The 50k model (from the ebay page, only place I could find a price) has a 1.5kw motor and makes 55 US gallons or 200 liters an hour. So from that basic bit of research, a kiloliter will cost you 7.5kwh in energy, let's say 8.

Alternatively, you could buy one of these water from air machines. They are around 22k ex vat, make 35 liters a day, and use around 400 watts continuously to do so.

On 9/12/2017 at 12:18 PM, plonkster said:

a kiloliter will cost you 7.5kwh in energy, let's say 8.

that's still way cheaper than the stuff you buy at picknpay - there must be a fortune in bottled water!

some of you might remember the 1970's movie 'soylent green', somehow the scarcity of water made me think of it.... dunnow why

cya!

On 9/12/2017 at 12:20 PM, plonkster said:

Alternatively, you could buy one of these water from air machines.

I was looking at a water-from-air machine the other day (in sympathy with our Capie cousins, I live in Joburg with plenty cheap water and have a very productive borehole powered by PV) and it turns out that it is just a heat exchanger that produces condensation at the cool element that is collected at the output.

That sounds very similar to me to the operation of and air-conditioner, which as luck would have it also produces a lot of condensate which is currently dumped into drainage systems and treated as effluent at great cost.

What would happen if it became law that all condensation from every aircon/heat-pump etc in any building above a certain size (say 2000m2) had to be captured and re-used in grey water systems for that building, how much water could be saved?

and they only work to the rated capacity if the humidity is good. So far ones tested here in CT...30lt unit producing 7lt per day with low humidity and a 20lt unit producing 4lt per day with same low humidity...

On 1/18/2018 at 4:15 PM, pilotfish said:

I was looking at a water-from-air machine the other day (in sympathy with our Capie cousins, I live in Joburg with plenty cheap water and have a very productive borehole powered by PV) and it turns out that it is just a heat exchanger that produces condensation at the cool element that is collected at the output.

That sounds very similar to me to the operation of and air-conditioner, which as luck would have it also produces a lot of condensate which is currently dumped into drainage systems and treated as effluent at great cost.

What would happen if it became law that all condensation from every aircon/heat-pump etc in any building above a certain size (say 2000m2) had to be captured and re-used in grey water systems for that building, how much water could be saved?

I actually thought about this as well. My brother is in CT and had a 90000 BTU install recently. They just need to capture and store the water for usage. I doubt if their unit will produce 35L per day - but it would be worth it to see how much they can get.