Is it a coincidence that the world drought map shows is almost similar to the world heat map? Climate artist and Wetskills ambassador Ap Verheggen doesn’t think so. His idea: warm air contains a lot of water. Why then not use sunshine to get water out of it? In 2016 he designed and built a device, based on solar energy that extracted water from the air. Costs: €17.000,-. Today Verheggen presents the next version of this device. It functions on solar energy only. Costs…. Just 3 dollars.
On solar energy
The device consists of a cheap solar cell, a cone shaped peltier cooling device. Moisture out of the air condenses and drips down the cone. On his website www.sunglacier.com, Verheggen makes the so called DC3 available for anyone. Verheggen is not interested in patenting this break through innovation. ‘I want to make a technique available with which we can solve our worldwide drought problems. This solution should be available for everybody everywhere.’
Open source project
For further development of the device, Verheggen invites everyone and every organization that is interested, to use the technical information that is available on his website. ‘Working on this project together, will save us decades of research. This is also where Wetskills comes in. Just like Verheggen, Wetskills is not about thinking, but about doing. And that is what the world needs today.’
For Wetskills participants
Wetskills organises events in which students and young professionals create out of the box solutions for actual water related problems. Wetskills participants will soon get the opportunity to sign up for a challenge in which they can further develop the water making device. The next step would be to have students and young water professionals all over the world collaborating with each other and with local organisations ti improve and implement the technology.
Watch the interview with Verheggen about the DC03 Device.
