A design student from Vienna, Kristof Retezár has invented a self-filling bike water bottle that uses humid air to produce water. It’s a called the Fontus and it condenses moisture out of the air and slowly fills up the bottle with water. Fontus has a small internal cooler that’s divided into two halves to cool water for condensation purposes. A solar panel provides power to cool the upper half of the condenser, which heats up the lower half. This cools down the upper half even further. The moving air will be slowed and cooled to create the moisture, which will then drip down into the bottle.
The creator claims that his contraption can produce 473 ml of water per hour. Any standard PET 500 ml bottle will fit the system. However, it is yet to be proven. There are even questions if the air pollution will affect the system or not, but so far Retezár stated, “the water is completely safe to drink provided that there aren’t any chemically bound toxics in the surrounding air.”
According to him, his plans for the Fontus are:
“Fontus can be applied in two different areas. Firstly, it may be interpreted as a sporty bicycle accessory. Useful on long bike tours, the constant search for freshwater sources such as rivers and gas stations can cease to be an issue since the bottle automatically fills itself up. Secondly, it might be a clever way of acquiring freshwater in regions of the world where groundwater is scarce but humidity is high. Experiments suggest that the bottle could harvest around 0.5 L water in one hour’s time in regions with high temperature and humidity values.”
He will enter the Fontus for the James Dyson Award contest. No news if this will ever reach the commercial market or not. Ingenius nonetheles.
Via Gearjunkie
Images Kristof Retezár
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