How Manufacturing Water Works

The United Nations has found that 22% of the world's population does not have access to clean drinking water. Could we fix the water shortage by manufacturing water? Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn more about manufacturing water.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from House stuff works dot Com brought to you by
Consumer Guidet Automotive We make carbine easier. Hi, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, a staff writer here
at how Stuff works dot Com. With me is arguably

(00:20):
the greatest writer at the entire site. Mr Charles Bryant,
are you Chuck and I am great and I am
a great writer? Yes, thank you. Heads off to your
self confidence. They're chuckings. So check. We have a huge problem,
and by we I mean you and I and the
rest of the human population on the planet right now.
We do. We are having trouble with water, with safe,
clean drinking water. The United Nations published a report a

(00:44):
year or two back, and they found that in the
global population doesn't have access to safe drinking water. Uh
and they may have like a river nearby, but it
could be polluted. China, China's got a big problem with
e waste right now in high levels of lead and mercury.
Lake Chad in Africa has shrunk to a tenth of
its size in the last like forty years. So water

(01:06):
is running out and it's actually becoming a problem in
the developed nations as well. Um, why with with this
problem of of water and water being such a simple
compound of just oxygen and hydrogen, why don't we just
make it right? And that's a great idea. And you
would think that, you know, with all the technology we
have today, we could just kind of throw it in
a big kitchen aid and mix it up and you know,

(01:28):
have a spicket at the other end. But it's really
it's it's not as easy as that. You can't just
mix them up. Um. In order to combine these two
uh compounds, compounds, molecules molecules close, Yeah, you you have
to have a big burst of energy and that you
know potentially could be really dangerous. Well yeah, it causes
an explosion. You have to entangle their the orbits of

(01:49):
their electrons, and yeah, it can be, like you said,
very dangerous. Uh So I don't think it's so dangerous
that it could never happen. I mean, we humans are
pretty in g enius, but we can't do it right
now now. But you know there's other solutions there. There
are I know when you were researching you found these
other inventions that people have been able to pull water

(02:11):
from the atmosphere pretty much, water right out of thin air, right,
kind of like a big humidifier. Yeah, which you said
that you do you use the de humidifier in your
basement water your plan? I do. I have it hooked
up to a hose. And you know here in Atlanta
we're under a drought, so we uh, we use our
water to water our house plants. We need to get
you some birkin stocks. Yeah, that's a great idea. So
you want to talk about Aqua Magic their chuck, which

(02:33):
I gotta say, I can't tell which one of these
two inventions I like more. Yeah, you know, I like
the other one better, But I'll tell you about Aqua Magic.
Aqua Magic is these two guys invented this. Uh. It's
it's you tow it behind a car like a trailer,
and it basically just pulls all the water uh from
the atmosphere. And um, how much does it make per hour?
It makes dred and twenty gallons of purified drinking water

(02:56):
in twenty four hours twenty four hours, which is pretty
good but significant. Yeah, the problem is that it runs
on fuel. Yeah, twelve gallons of diesel fuel for and emissions,
and so it's not exactly the best solution, but the
thing is it's portable. They debuted this thing um at
a relief site after Hurricane Katrina, right, and you know, really,
once your house is under ten twelve feet of water,

(03:18):
you really don't care about the CEO two emissions exactly.
You just want the clean drinking water. So it definitely
has its benefits. Uh. The other invention that I came
up with when I was researching this is the Whissen windmill. Yeah,
this one's really cool. Yeah. Um, it's named what is it? Uh, Well,
he named it max Water, which you know all inventors have,
they're cute little names, and that is a cute one too,
it is. So this thing, uh is kind of similar,

(03:40):
except it has the advantage of being totally green. It
doesn't use any fossil fuels. They painted it green. No, No,
it's like the the real kind of the new hip green. Yeah. Yeah,
the eco friendly Macy's one day sale get a free
toepag green that kind of green. Um. So the whole
thing runs exclusively on wind power, and um, basically it

(04:02):
uses a refrigerant to cool the blades of the windmill,
which causes the water and the air to condense. It
collects it and there you have it, and it actually
produces a lot more um. I think something like gallons
per day, per day. Um. The problem is we have
no idea what the impact would be on the water cycle,

(04:22):
you know, the rain cycle. Um if we started using
these widespread across the globe to address drinking water, right,
and I don't know how they could really project what
could happen. We can't, We can't, which is kind of
seen in that that British project from nineteen fifty two
that you know about, right, Yeah, the air cloud seating, Yeah,

(04:44):
Operation Cumulus. Yeah, that's crazy, and it was I think
post World War two. They found out if they flew
above the clouds and threw a bunch of silver iodied
and dryce and salt, it would actually make make it rain. Yeah.
They were trying to rain out and front right, and
it worked really really well. It worked a little too well,
didn't it. Yeah. So basically this poor place called North Devon,

(05:07):
which was near the site of the cloud seating, experience
two fifty times the normal amount of rain. That's not
in two weeks um thirty five people died. Damn's broke
bowlers and that was the end of the experiment. That's
sadly yes, it's a testimony to how humans really shouldn't
tamper with nature exactly. If you want to find out
more about nature and manufacturing water in the like, read

(05:30):
why can't we manufacture water on how stuff works dot
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