Water scarcity is a growing problem in many parts of our world. Fresh supplies come under pressure with the need for better water management even more urgent with increased population, changing weather patterns and rising per capita water consumption. The average North American uses 350 litres a day. In other places around the world that becomes ten litres a day if they are lucky enough to have a continuous supply of water.

In Kelowna we have a company that has discovered a new way to collect water and they are out there in the marketplace selling their idea to investors.
It is a story of genius and packaging and it is happening in our backyard.

The escalating cost of electricity has sent a growing number of consumers in search of ways to generate electricity at home. Element Four, based in Kelowna, is betting that with bottled-water consumption increasing and aging water distribution systems, water will be the next commodity consumers will want to produce at home. The company has done what it says is a top-to-bottom reinvention of the atmospheric-water generator, a device that pulls water from the air by cooling it to the point that condensation forms and then keeps it sterile for drinking.

Element Four’s watermill is a 300-watt generator that makes up to 12 liters of drinking water per day, enough for your typical North American household. At Kelowna’s rate of 6 cents per kilowatt-hour, the cost comes to about 3 to 4 cents per liter. The technical innovation is in two areas, according to Richard Reinbeck, chief technology officer. The first is a system of temperature, pressure and humidity sensors that feeds into a micro-controller and makes the device automatically adapt to its environment. The micro-controller fine tunes the flow of air and refrigerant in the machine to match its surroundings so that it continues to work in extremes of heat and cold, inside or outside. “From Toronto to Ecuador, you can pull it out of the box and the machine will search for its peak efficiency and then run that way,” says Rick Howard, Element Four’s CEO.

The control system’s improved efficiency lets the machine use a bare condensation coil, unlike other such devices, which use cooling fins. Finned coils could harbor bacteria, says Weisbeck. But a bare coil can be kept sterile using the same ultraviolet lamp that kills bugs in the collected water.

Market trends appear to be in ­atmospheric water’s favor. Consumers around the globe are turning away from the tap, Howard notes. Though he hopes they’ll start turning toward atmospheric water, right now they’re buying bottled water. According to the International Bottled Water Association, global consumption of ­bottled water has grown 7.6 ­percent per year on average since 2002, ­reaching 189 billion liters in 2007. The United States led consumption, with 33 ­billion L, but was followed closely by populous developing countries like China, Brazil, and Mexico. China’s market grew 17.4 percent per year.

Even though they’re buying more bottled water than ever, consumers in the industrial world are still trained to turn on the tap. The United Nations estimates that 880 million people lack safe sources of drinking water. Atmospheric-water-­generator companies are ­looking to make inroads there too. Element Four’s other product, the WaterWall, is ­targeted at supplying a ­developing-world village or neighborhood. The device, which the company will start manufacturing in early 2009, is made up of a scalable number of generators, each of which is essentially a bare bones form of the WaterMill. In places where the power grid is ­delicate, a ­kilowatt-scale water generator could easily draw so much power at start-up that it would cause a ­blackout, one reason ­atmospheric-water generators have failed in the developing world in the past. So Weisbeck designed the WaterWall to start up in stages, gradually increasing the load and, one hopes, sparing the local grid.

I have stood in their offices and watched the demonstration and it is quite amazing to see the water coming in from the air outside. That is as technical as I should really get.