Making Water From Air

Architects are often trained as generalists who think about problems globally. Leave it up to an architect and his team to come up with a smart solution to address a critical global water crisis – the severe lack of accessible and clean potable water throughout the world.

Congratulations to architect David Hertz and inventor Rich Groden for winning the latest XPRIZE. What they have done is so cool. Their product, the Skywater machine, can change how people interact with water and access clean water, thereby changing their daily routines, reducing sanitary issues, and improving their health.

David Hertz harvesting water in Big Sur, California. Skywater 150 produces up to 150 gallons a day, and the water can be stored in water collection tanks for future use. (Photo courtesy Skysource.org)

Recently during Visioneering 2018, XPRIZE’S annual gathering of philanthropists and innovators to evaluate concepts for future competitions, the Foundation announced the winners of the $1.75 million grand prize for the Water Abundance XPRIZE. The prize mission – fresh water for impact, seeks to create decentralized, affordable access to water with the use of 100 percent renewable energy, whenever and wherever people need it.

Grand Prize Winner, California-based The Skysource / Skywater Alliance, won the Water Abundance XPRIZE’s $1.5 million prize. (Photo courtesy XPRIZE)

The two-year competition was powered by Tata and Australian Aid and launched in 2016 at the United Nations Day reception in New Delhi, India. It challenged innovators from 98 teams from 27 countries to alleviate the global water crisis by finding a sustainable and affordable way to harvest and bring potable water to those who do not have access to it. The specific challenge was to create a device that could extract a minimum of 2000 liters of water a day from the atmosphere using 100% renewable energy at a cost of no more than 2 cents per liter.

Grand Prize Winner, California-based The Skysource / Skywater Alliance, led by architect David Hertz and inventor Rich Groden, took home $1.5 million. The team consists of professionals in the field of architecture, engineering, construction, and clean, and renewable energy solutions. It developed an easily deployable high-volume water generator that can be used in any climatic condition while solving multiple problems simultaneously, with a resultant low embodied energy, net positive, and carbon negative solution. Its atmospheric water generator, also known as the the Skywater machine, condenses moisture in the atmosphere, filters the moisture, which then becomes fresh drinking water.

The Skywater machines use a patented Adiabatic Distillation Process to create potable water from air. (Image courtesy Skysource.org)

Runner-up, Hawaii-based JMCC WING led by James McCanney, took home $150,000. The McCanney WING Generator, is a high torque, low cost wind energy system which is used to power the JMCC WING, an atmospheric water generator.

We need to help spread the word, give them our support so that they can succeed in pushing out their technologies globally. Thank you to the XPRIZE Foundation for putting this competition out there to incentivize us to take action in changing the world and address this critical crisis.