Star Wars' Tech Becomes Reality: Desert Moisture Farming

by Michael Reilly | June 11, 2009

Unless you're a big giant geek, you probably don't remember that in Star Wars: A New Hope (episode IV), young Luke Skywalker is living with his Aunt and Uncle on a moisture farm on the desert planet Tatooine.

It's kind of a far out concept, the idea that water is valuable enough that people will go into the desert and farm it using big giant contraptions (called 'vaporators' in the Star Wars universe, pictured left) that condense moisture out of the atmosphere. Correction: it WAS far out until climate change, pollution and an explosion of human population made water scarcity one of the biggest looming issues of the next century.

Now a group of German researchers have brought the odd invention into the realm of reality. An saline rich solution comes into contact with the desert air (which can hold a lot of water, even if there is no rain or surface water to speak of). The salty liquid is a sponge for mositure, which gets trapped in solution and then flows into a vacuum chamber. There energy collected from solar panels elsewhere on the device heats the solution and the water bubbles off as steam before it cools and condenses as pure water. 

Of course, harvesting water from the ambient air is not an entirely new idea, but the research team --  some of whome come from the cleantech company Logos Innovationen -- is betting that their 100% solar-powered version of the device will be profitable enough to take off in the water-strapped world we will soon live in.

And with Australia and several countries around the world considering sucking up the oceans for their drinking water, the team may be onto something. What's more, as climate change warms the planet more and more water vapor will hang out in the atmosphere. Who knows, there may even come a time when humidity in the air becomes our primary source of drinking water; that Star Wars world may not be such a fantasy after all.

Images: Wikipedia, Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft (via ScienceDaily)

-Michael Reilly

Comments

[Adam Mitulinski]

The concept is brilliant!

There has been a 'condensed' (pardon the pun) version of the contraption shown on 'Dragons' Den', here in the UK; it was basically a water dispenser that didn't need water to re-fill it. Saves on those massive plastic tumblers! :D