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.