Phillips Adam's in his weekend magazine column in the Weekend Australian wrote about a remarkable invention by a Mr Max Whisson.

Apparently Whisson has invented a windmill that is self powered and is able to produce water from air.

I'm no scientist so I would welcome comments from posters, especially those who have a handle on the physics involved in extracting water from the air.

Is this a wind-up, or is it really possible?

If it is it may well be one of the most important inventions ever.

Read PA's article here: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21123007-12272,00.html

Certainly it is quite probable that it does exactly what they claim. There are already commercially available units that run off electricity that collect water condensing on refrigerated coils and filter it for drinking water. A small unit can provide about 12 liters a day or more, depending on the humidity. I betting that instead of electricity being used to power the compressor a turbine-like arrangement would be used to power it directly. It will need to be filtered a bit as dust and some other atmospheric pollutants also tend to come with the water, but it is a wonderful way of collecting drinking water, the conventional technology just needs power, I guess Max's doesn't. So far the units I've seen are only good for drinking water quantities as not enough is collected (especially with the amount of power needed) for washing and industrial uses.

Thanks for that Bugsy, do you know of www sites on line where i can read and see the units you speak of?

And do you know what quantity of water these units are able to refine?

Interesting, but I wonder if they fall into the same problem that wind
generators succom to ?
At design wind speeds, say 15 to 20 knots fine, but output drops to the
cube root of the wind speed. Now in suburban areas to get high enough
turbulance free air you would need a 30 metre tower to install it on.
Anything less is probably a waste of time and money.
I havn't a clue how it works but unless they overcome the above problem
it will be back to the drawing board.

Her you go, take a look at this:

http://www.airwater.com.au/home.htm

If you click on the products link for air-water, they have all the specs and capacities.

Thanks for that link Bugsy, I'm on to it.

Bazz, I too considered that wind speed regeneration ratio and can't see how it would work.

From the Adams article its described as long upright rotating columns that can calibrate and turn in any wind direction available.

I'm try and track down some info about this. Actually I'll go right to the inventor himself and see how much he is willing to reveal.