This is either the most important story of the year or another Philip Adams fantasy. I don't know which.

On 27 January Philip Adams devoted his weekly column in The Australian to a story about his mate, Max Whisson. Dr Whisson claims to have invented a "Water Windmill" capable of extracting drinking quality water from the atmosphere in a manner that is both economical and environmentally friendly.

See: Water from wind (
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21123007-12272,00.html)

On 21 May Max Whisson and his Water Windmill were featured on the ABC's Australian Story.

See:

Windmills of Your Mind (http://abc.net.au/austory/)

Comments:

The idea of extracting potable water from the atmosphere is not new. Gadgets that will do this are commercially available. See for example:

Watermaker India (http://www.watermakerindia.com/)

Currently available atmospheric water extractors do not work well when humidity drops below 30% or temperatures drop below 20 degrees Celsius. I have not been able to discover whether Dr. Whisson's device is similarly affected by environmental conditions.

From the perspective of solving the water problems of Australia's coastal cities it is not clear that Dr. Whisson's invention offers any cost or environmental advantage over conventional desalination plants powered by (say) windmills.

Water for agriculture is a different matter. But even here such basic measures as covering irrigation channels to reduce losses due to evaporation and more precisely calibrated irrigation seem cheaper, better, more environmentally friendly strategies than Dr. Whisson's Water Windmill.

ON THE OTHER HAND

If it works the Water Windmill would be one of the greatest inventions in history. Given the water stresses in some parts of the world, Water Windmills could help avert wars. At least part of the Arab-Israeli conflict is about control of precious water resources.

A working water windmill would be worth billions. The "proof of concept" could be built for a few million – peanuts to a large venture capital outfit. So why haven't venture capital firms been falling over themselves to finance Dr. Whisson?

Either Dr. Whisson and his mate, Philip Adams, are the world's worst marketers; or it's yet another Philip Adams fantasy.

Correction:

It's Phillip Adams, not Philip Adams.

You can see a fuller version of this post on my blog:

http://steven-meyer.blogspot.com/

Ah but remember the electric car?

I received the following comment from Max Whisson:

Start quote:

The Water Windmill is no fantasy and follows well-known physics and engineering principles. It has taken a lot of ingenuity however to arrange for wind to provide both the power and the water. The arrangement provides a fundamentally new water source. Devices that have appeared so far have sucked air in and refrigerated that air using outside power, usually electricity or diesel. This requirement restricts the size and the potential location of the device. There are no such limitations with our new Water Windmill or, as I prefer to call it, the Water From Air Harvester. I is based on a new type of wind turbine and we propose to offer the option of adding an electricity generator that can be switched on when water stores are adequate. One of many potential new uses is the planting of forests in arid remote regions but it is expected to be particularly valuable in protecting farms from drought and in salvaging wetlands and rivers.

Max Whisson,
water UN Limited

End quote:

MY RESPONSE

I stand by what I wrote. Why aren't venture capitalists beating a path to Dr. Whisson's door? This is exactly the sort of thing I'd expect them to take a punt on.

If Dr. Whisson could convince me it has a chance of working I'd be more than willing to risk a portion of my own (meager) savings on his invention. I'd also be touting his invention to everyone I know, some of whom are much wealthier than me.

Just to be clear, by "work" I mean that Dr. Whisson can get it to produce water at reasonable cost on a large scale. Lot's of inventions based on "well-known physics and engineering principles" work as prototypes. The difficult part is scaling them up and mass-producing them.

See also:

http://steven-meyer.blogspot.com/2007/05/most-important-story-of-year-another.html

The self assured,rambling,pontificating,quite talking Philip Adams is a bit full of himself.He dwells too much on the timbre of his voice,rather than the meaning in the words.All roads don't lead to his Rome of narrow insular experience.He is not a dynamic intellect who can define a new reality born of his own experieces but rather relies on history,a good memory and the observations of others to mould his version of reality.He has not a truely cutting,edge analytical mind forged by survival instincts.

For these reasons I take little notice of his waffle.

Arjay

I think the more important question is whether Dr. Whisson's Water From Air Harvester will work. If it does it will be one of the most important inventions ever.

The fact that it's Phillip Adams spruiking it does not give me much confidence. A SERIOUS inventor would have been making pitches to venture capital outfits or relevant government departments rather than relying on Adams to publicise his need for capital.

In his column in the The Australian on 27 January Phillip Adams writes:

>>Australia needs a few Whissons at the moment – and the Whissons need some initial government funding to get their ideas off the ground. For the price of one of John Howard’s crappy nuclear reactors, Max might be able to solve a few problems. Ours and the world’s. >>

That's not an appeal for funds. That's a bit of smug, self-satisfied point scoring. It's puerile. Nobody with money to invest would take it seriously.

If Max Whisson has a workable invention I hope he has the sense to ditch Phillip Adams and contact people who can help him bring it to market.

I think I saw this on Catalyst or some such show.
As far as I know Whisson hasn't actually built one yet, he's just designed one, although the principle of "water from air" is sound and already being used in other water generation technologies. I think the fact that he hasn't even built a working prototype and tested how much water can be harvested under what conditions etc. and estimate how much it will actually cost for cost/litre produced comparisons against current proven technologies probably speaks volumes for the venture capitalists.

Quite often, if you aren't prepared to spend much of your own money on your own idea, a venture capitalist probably wouldn't spend much on it either. On just a design? But what would an old leftie like Adams know about that? He's probably trying to drum up some "buzz" so his old mate Whisson doesn't have to spend any of his own money to develop the thing, if it works properly.

Without actually knowing much about the proposed device, my only hesitation would be the amount of energy needed, for the amount of water produced.

The amount of water available from a given amount of air is not huge, so the energy needed to move the air to the processing end would be massive, hence output for input would be.. discouraging at first glance.

DIGRESSION.
Steven Meyer.. welcome to olo, I've not seen any post of your b4. but now having looked at your total posts, I see all but one are on this single story. Your other one suggested
a) You have no interest in Aboriginal culture
b) To get attention they should become Muslims.
c) Islam has drugs and alchohol under control and it only allows sex in 'appropriate' circumstances.

Steve, I'm rather well known for 'anti islamic rants' as some describe them so rather than turn this thread into one, please have a look at the other one you contributed to for a response to that last point (c)
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=5858#810
cheers.

ARJAY.. *bingo* about PA and his voice :) spot on mate. I think he is a good candidate for the next incarnation of Star Wars and the 'wise voice' of Yoda.

Extracting water from air is traditionally an energy intensive process and will only supply enough for drinking purposes.You would need many windmills and a lot of hot air to make it viable mass production process.Taking the salt out of seawater would be more viable.

Lake Ayre in South Australia is a vast area that is below sea level,why not do a study on tha potential of flooding that region with sea water and see if the local environment would benefit from a small inland sea.It could change the local environment for the better by increasing local precipitation.The amount of water evaporated into the local environment would be enormous in such a hot climate.Just a thought.

Evaporation does absolutely nothing for local rainfall, our major irrigation areas in Vic, NSW and SA are semi arid areas, there are vast areas that get soaked every 7-10 days and the summer rainfall has not increased one drop.
This is a myth about 150 years old at least could be thousands for all I know, all those ruins in SA are because of this rubbish, they thought agriculture would create rain it didn,t. I was raised on an irrigated farm and we went for about 5 months every summer without rain, in fact our average rainfall was less than 30cm.
If we need humidity of 30% and temperature of 20 plus degrees, this will rarely work in inland Auatralia, we only get humidity of 30% in the winter, when the temp is frequently below 20 and that is when it usually rains anyway.
It might work in the tropics.

no invention will solve the fundamental problem: total water, finite quantity. population, growing.

the only genuine solution to resource shortage is stable population and recycled resources. every other 'solution' is just dropping the problem, ever larger, on succeeding generations.

I received the following from Phillip Adams.

>>you silly little s h * t! you know NOTHING about Max or the issue - or the financing! OR the fact that my columns/b'casts on Max and his inventions (going back years incidentally) have provoked a massive response from major investors all over the world...so grow up or shut up>>

MY RESPONSE:

I am DELIGHTED that your columns have helped Max raise money.

This is a case where I would be OVERJOYED to be proved wrong.

If Max's invention works he'll be up there with Edward Jenner, Jonas Salk and Joseph Lister as one of humanity's great benefactors.

Stevenlmeyer I hope you sent Phillip Adams a copy of my sentiments.I don't have to use expletives to get my message across,just reveal his feeble minded ideas that have the aura of the "manifest destiny" due his mellow dulcit tones.

I have to come to the defence of Philip Adams, he has more courage and intelligence than his detractors, on this post.
I watched the program featuring the wind mill, it seemed more effective than the PM's inaction since gaining office in 1996.

As I understand it a University is working on Max's concept or at least the windmill part of it.

I do hope it all works and as they say time will tell.

I just would not like to have PA promoting anything of mine.

Sarah 101,why can't Phillip come to his own defence?Does he lack the courage of his own convictions?

It was on The New Inventors tonight.
A real model, so I think you mockers and doubters better put a sock in it.
The same old right wing crap ridicule ridicule ridicule.

Guys, reality check time. A toy model is one thing, the basic fundamentals of physics are another. It only takes some relatively straight forward calcultions concerning the heat of condensation of water vapor and the energy available from moving air in order to demonstrate that the capture area required to produce the amount of energy to condense the volume of water claimed is 100 times greater than claimed by Max, even assuming his turbine is 100% efficient!

A "real" model alanpoi? A cardboard mock-up actually. He hasn't built one, noone has, or at least noone has mentioned having a working one, not even Max. So what's the game? Generate interest so that someone will fund it without proof of concept? One way to do that is to get one of your mates in the media to talk it up a bit and try and get some public interest in it so the government may pitch in some funds, they're always in for some high-media project that makes it look like they're actually doing something. If it was demonstrated, and there was real money in it, the capitalists would be all over it like a fat kid on a smartie.

Oh com'n bugsy do you really think that the ABC would go along with a cardboard mockup?.
Australian capitaliasts are a very conservative mob, they are not into taking risks they are into takeovers.
Look at the hundreds of Oz inventions that have gone overseas besause of lack of interest, then gone on to be successful.
If you want to be taken seriously quit writing this crap.

I suggest that you look at that episode again alanpoi, it was a cardboard mockup, the cooling fins were obviously thick cardboard painted silver, didn't you watch the episode properly? The "cooling fins" weren't even straight and looked like they were about to fall off! When asked about details on how much energy it would take, what conditions it could be used under and how much water it actually uses, he could not answer the questions, just give theoretical estimates. This is because one has not been built mate. If you want to be taken seriously, learn to watch and listen. Get a tape or digital recording of the latest episode to see what I'm talking about. Don't assume the ABC is "above" such things.

Not even theortical estimates Bugsy. He was asked about the efficiency of his system in liters per kW.hr, and a couple of examples were given by the questioner including desalination (3 L/kW.hr I think). He couldn't answer the question - stating something like desalination uses distillation (incorrect, modern plants uses reverse osmosis) and then suggested (surprise, surprise) that his system would be better than that. Another question was about how closely his units could be spaced, on roofs of tall building etc, given interference effects. Max's answer was to the effect that his would be no problem - nonsense of course since like any wind turbine they would need appropriate spacing to avoid the effects of flow pattern distortions and wind shadow effects.
Sad to see a medical expert who came up with a great invention with the retractable needle syringe now getting carried away and blowing his reputation on a piece of science fiction.

The following is the text of a submission to the ABC's "Science Show."

A recent edition of Australian Story featured Max Whisson and his "Water Windmill." ("Windmills of Your Mind," Australian Story, 21 May 2007).

The claims made for Dr. Whisson's water windmill are, to say the least, huge. If the claims are correct Max Whisson will one day rank alongside Edward Jenner, Jospeh Lister and Jonas Salk as one of humanity's great benefactors.

I cannot decide whether Max Whisson's water windmill is the story of the decade or a sad example of self-delusion. Either way the ABC owes us more than a half-hour segment devoted largely to telling us what a good chap Max Whisson is. The claims for the water windmill should be investigated by The Science Show because this is first and foremost a question about science.

If my manifest scepticism about the "water windmill" proves wrong I shall apologise unreservedly to Dr. Whisson. But at the moment I cannot help feeling it all looks a bit questionable