Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by gmkoliver 4878 days ago
I'd like to know how much water this makes in how long. A hair dryer is no 60w bulb, that's for sure.
2 comments

from the article: "this 300 pound, dorm fridge-sized box can take any kind of sewage or even salt water and create 200 to 250 gallons a day of clean water."
Well you are looking at 24-48 kwh per day of use and the article says that the machine purifies ~250 gallons in that time. So approximately 10gph at 1-2kw.
(1.5kW*24hr)/225gal ~~ 150 J/g, which is in line with the figures reported here

http://www.aquatechnology.net/vaporcompressiondistillers.htm...

Ideally, one only has to push the water back and forth over its phase boundary by an arbitrarily small delta-T, so the energy consumption can be arbitrarily small too. The 150 J/g is all heat leakage.