Stuff You Should Know - How Manufacturing Water Works

Episode Date: June 18, 2008

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. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to The War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Brought to you by Consumer Guide Automotive. We make our buying easier. Hi and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, a staff writer here at HowStuffWorks.com. With me is arguably the greatest writer at the entire site, Mr. Charles Bryant. How are you, Chuck? I'm great and I am a great writer. Yes, thank you. Hats off to

your self-confidence there, Chuck. Thanks. So, Chuck, 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 year or two back and they found that 20% of the global population doesn't have access to safe drinking water. And they may have like a river nearby, but it could be polluted. Right. And China's got a big problem with e-waste right now and high levels of lead and mercury. Lake Chad and Africa has shrunk to a tenth of its size in the last like 40 years. So, water is running out and it's actually becoming a problem in the developed nations as well.

Why, with this problem of water and water being such a simple compound of just oxygen and hydrogen, why don't we just make it? Right. 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, have a spigot at the other end. But it's really, it's not as easy as that. You can't just mix them up in order to combine these two compounds. Compounds? Molecules. Molecules. Close. Yeah. You have to have a big burst of energy and that, you know, potentially could be really dangerous. Well, yeah, it causes an explosion. Right. You have to entangle the orbits of their electrons and, yeah, it can be, like you said,

very dangerous. So, I don't think it's so dangerous that it could never happen. I mean, we humans are pretty ingenious, but we can't do it right now. No. But, you know, there's other solutions. There are, I know when you were researching, you found these other inventions that people have been able to pull water from the atmosphere. Yeah. Pretty much water right out of thin air. Right. Kind of like a big dehumidifier. Yeah. Which you said that you do. You use a dehumidifier in your basement to water your plants? I do. I have it hooked up to a hose and, you know, here in Atlanta, we're under a drought. So, we use our water to water our house plants. We need to get you some Birkenstocks. Yeah. That's a great idea. So, you want to talk about

Aquamagic there, Chuck, which I got to 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 Aquamagic. Aquamagic is, these two guys invented this. It's, you tow it behind a car like a trailer, and it basically just pulls all the water from the atmosphere. And how much does it make per hour? It makes 120 gallons of purified drinking water in 24 hours. 24 hours, which is pretty good. But significant. Yeah. The problem is that it runs on fuel. Yeah. 12 gallons of diesel fuel for that. And emissions. And so, it's not exactly the best solution. But the thing is, it's portable. They debuted this thing at a relief site after Hurricane Katrina. Right. And, you know, really, once your

house is under 10, 12 feet of water, you really don't care about the CO2 emissions. Exactly. You just want the clean drinking water. So, it definitely has its benefits. The other invention that I came up with when I was researching this is the Wissen Windmill. Yeah. This one's really cool. Yeah. It's named, what is it? Well, he named it Max Water, which, you know, all inventors have their cute little names. And that is a cute one, too. It is. So, this thing is kind of similar, 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 real kind of the new hip green. Oh, I get it. Yeah. The eco-friendly Macy's one-day sale, get a free tote bag green, that kind of green. So, the whole thing runs it exclusively

on wind power. And basically, it 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, I think, something like 2600 gallons. Yeah, per day. Per day. The problem is, is we have no idea what the impact would be on the water cycle, you know, the rain cycle. Right. 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, either, you know, on the water scale. No, we can't. We can't, which is kind of seen in that British project from 1952 that you know about, right? Yeah, the cloud seeding. Yeah, Operation Cumulus. Yeah, that's crazy. And I think post World War II,

they found out if they flew above the clouds and threw a bunch of silver iodide and drys and salt, it would actually make it rain. Yeah, they were trying to rain out enemy fronts. 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, which was near the site of the cloud seeding, experienced 250 times the normal amount of rain in two weeks. 35 people died, dams broke, boulders rife. 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 and the like, read Why Can't We Manufacture Water on HowStuffWorks.com.

For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast at howstuffworks.com. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? On the new podcast, The Turning Room of Mirrors, we look beneath the delicate veneer of American Ballet and the culture formed by its most influential figure, George Balangene. He used to say, what are you looking at, dear? You can't see you, only I can see you. What you're doing is larger than yourself, almost like a religion. Like he was a god. Listen to The Turning Room of Mirrors on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to The War on Drugs on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.