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The Summer Humidity Temptation: Can Engineers Turn Moist Air into Usable Water in the GCC?

Yaseen Khan Mohammed CEng

As a GCC-based mechanical engineer in building services, every summer comes with extreme humidity — and along with it, a strong engineering temptation to look at all that moisture in the air and think, “That’s a hidden water source going to waste.”

From the perspective of experienced professionals and subject-matter experts, what realistic technologies or proven methods exist to extract usable water from high-humidity air in hot climates like the GCC? And what are the real technical and energy challenges that turn this tempting idea into (or away from) engineering reality?

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    GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council ?).

    We have the same but opposite problem here in UK of high (relative) humidity air creating mould, damp and rot problems in housing. The current 'problem' is that when heat pumps are being proposed for house heating we get sudden loss of performance when the cold-side heat extraction causes frosting and icing of the heat exchanger element at a most inopportune time. 

    I suspect (ignorance) that you already have heat exchangers for cooling of hot buildings but that no one has paid any real attention to the condensate drain (rusty water??).

    On thought is that here in UK we now have fridge-freezers where the fridge part has a special plastic designed (?) to condense the extra water vapour on a drip/drain surface which then goes to a drain hole and tank above the condenser pump (which tries to re-evaporate the water! - But efficiency standards now mean the pump is cooler and we get water spills :doh:)

    It may be possible to combine the air conditioner action with a 'sterile' water condensate mechanism that produces cooled potable water by mixing and matching the technologies from these different but identical applications of the cooling cycle.

    Yaseen Khan Mohammed CEng said:
    what are the real technical and energy challenges

    The challenge is getting the coefficient of performance (CoP) high enough to make it worth while (see heat pumps in difficult/peculiar places - e.g. UK)

  • 0 in reply to Philip Oakley

    The objective is to harness atmospheric humidity by extracting water vapor from air and repurposing the condensed water for various non-potable uses.

  • 0 in reply to Philip Oakley

    If you're in a hot and humid place, you probably already have air conditioning units running.  So it may be as simple as catching the drips and sending them to a holding tank.  Almost zero cost.

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