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US 2014/0196488 A1Published application
Water harvesting device
AssigneeSharp Kabushiki Kaisha
InventorsPhilip Mark Shryane ROBERTS, Allan EVANS, Michael Charles TOMLIN, Harry Garth WALTON
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An apparatus extracts water from the air using a single circuit of gas containing a compressor, a cooling element, a heat exchanger and an ion source, where a single stream of air is used to provide water and to pre-cool the inlet air.
Claims6
An apparatus for collecting water from air, comprising:
- a compressor for compressing incoming ambient air;
- a counter-flow heat exchanger having an inbound portion and an outbound portion, the heat exchanger receiving compressed air from the compressor in the inbound portion;
- an adiabatic expansion cooling device to further cool the compressed air and to condense water therefrom;
- an ion source for providing condensation nuclei to the adiabatic expansion cooling device;
- and
- a water collector for collecting the condensed water from the cooling device;
- wherein the outbound portion of the counter-flow heat exchanger is configured to receive the cooled dry air from the adiabatic expansion cooling device to pre-cool the compressed air in the inbound portion before the dry air exits the outbound portion.
4 more elements
A method for collecting water from air, comprising:
- flowing compressed air from a compressor to a counter-flow heat exchanger having an inbound portion and an outbound portion, the heat exchanger receiving the compressed air from the compressor in the inbound portion;
- cooling the compressed air in an adiabatic expansion cooling device;
- providing condensation nuclei to the adiabatic expansion cooling device from an ion source;
- condensing water from the cooled compressed air;
- and
- collecting the condensed water from the cooling device in a water collector;
- wherein the outbound portion of the counter-flow heat exchanger is configured to receive the cooled dry air from the adiabatic expansion cooling device to pre-cool the compressed air in the inbound portion before the dry air exits the outbound portion.
4 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.