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1 HN user recommended this in 2018, in one comment.
20072026
Each tall tick is one HN user's first recommendation. A short tick is the same user again. Click a tick to jump to the comment.
1 HN user recommended this in 2018, in one comment.
Each tall tick is one HN user's first recommendation. A short tick is the same user again. Click a tick to jump to the comment.
> What makes you so confident that they are using a Peltier?
Because you can buy the exact device on Amazon (Noctua heat sink sold separately)[1]. Compare that image to the images shown in this MIT news article[2].
> The paper never mentions "Peltier". If the "condenser" is actually an electrically driven Peltier, this would seem like a fraudulently bad description, justifying retraction of the paper.
I would agree.
> The condenser of the device was fabricated with a copper plate (4 cm by 4 cm and 0.6 cm thick) attached to a commercial air-cooled heat sink (NH-L9x65, Noctua) to efficiently dissipate the heat from condensation to the ambient.
This describes a Peltier device exactly. Pass a current through it and one side will get hot and one side will get cold. Hence the heat sink. You need someway to dissipate that electrical energy.
Ask yourself, if the system works passively (i.e. ambient temperature), why do they need a heat sink? Would attaching a heat sink to my shed cool it off? I think the answer is clear.
Ignoring everything I said, to condense water from air you need two things. Air with water in it and a temperature differential. How is the differential generated? According to the paper, a condenser. How does every condenser generate a temperature gradient? Electrical current.
1. https://www.amazon.com/TEC1-12706-Thermoelectric-Peltier-Coo... 2. http://news.mit.edu/2017/MOF-device-harvests-fresh-water-fro...