What You Need To Know About Drinking Water…?

About 71% of the Earth’s surface is covered by water. Out of this, only 2.8 percent is fresh water that can be used for drinking purposes. With teeming millions of human lives and a sizable number of other life forms needing fresh water to sustain themselves, this tiny fraction of freshwater may not be sufficient in the near future. One third of the Earth’s surface may be covered by water, yet mankind has no choice but to worry about the supply of potable water in the near future. Using the major water bodies as dumping grounds for all our refuse has polluted nearly every available source. Coleridge had so aptly said, “Water water everywhere, not a drop to drink”.

We are surrounded by an untapped source of pure water that most have overlooked. This invisible and immense source of pure water is our atmosphere, which envelopes us in 4,000 cubic miles of water that we haven’t, till recently, even deemed a viable source of pure drinking water. Apart from being renewable, it also has the potential of being the biggest, cost-effective source of pure drinking water.

In most of the world’s populated areas, the air holds enough moisture to provide pure drinking water to all who live there. For poor countries, as well as some arid ones with minimal supplies of fresh water, a viable solution would be to generate water from air. Peace keeping forces stationed in underdeveloped countries have found this technology that converts air to water to be a boon -one that helps them overcome great difficulties in obtaining supplies during such operations. This is true for disaster relief teams as well. For example, after earthquakes, these disaster relief teams need to combat fast spreading water-related diseases like dysentery and allergies. A technology that can create pure drinking water from air is truly a blessing at such times.

This technology is already in commercial production and generally come in two affordable categories - residential and commercial. Creating pure drinking water from air is commercially viable as it costs half as much as bottled water and be used in cruise ships, hospitals, public buildings and offices. It also maximizes production of pure water with minimum consumption of energy. Creating water from air is finding uses in agricultural fields as well, using drip irrigation systems.

Apart from producing pure drinking water, it also has some other obvious benefits such as the avoiding the usage of non bio degradable plastic for bottled water and saving transportation costs.

Another immediate advantage of obtaining water from air is that we avoid the toxic wastes from contaminated groundwater. It is hardly possible to find any source of freshwater that does not contain traces of toxic chemicals. Even the chlorine that is used to purify water and remove disease-causing microbes is harmful to us. One such water purification system, that uses this technology, is Dewpointe. It also acts as a water dispenser with a feature that lets you adjust the cold water temperature and serves instant hot water.