We’ve all heard the expression, “Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink.” It’s a line in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s eighteenth-century poem, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” and it describes the plight of a group of ill-fated sailors becalmed near the equator, baking in the sun but unable to sip from the briny ocean around them.
Today, the line is used to describe the situation of anyone who’s thirsty but nowhere near a tap, river, lake, or some other potable water source where they can slake their thirst. Unfortunately, that’s a significant chunk of humanity. According to a recent report by UNESCO, in 2020, some 2 billion people – 26% of the world’s population – “did not have access to safely managed drinking water services.” But thanks to a unique technology called Hydropanels, the number of places on earth where there’s no water to drink may shrink to almost zero.
— Courtesy of SOURCE
Hydropanels look much like solar panels, but instead of capturing solar energy from the sun to produce electricity, they use it to make pure water. Solar-powered fans draw moisture-laden air into the four-by-six-foot panel, where a hygroscopic (water-absorbing) material traps the vapor. The vapor is then condensed into a liquid and mineralized to make it drinkable. The water can then be plumbed into a pressurized storage tank in a home or, in larger installations, a reservoir in a school, hotel, worksite, or village. Hydropanels can be used almost anywhere the sun shines, except in cold climates where temperatures drop below freezing for extended periods. In those conditions, the panel will enter “hibernation mode” and stop producing water.
SOURCE, the Scottsdale, Arizona-based company that manufactures Hydropanels, has been around since 2014 and has installed commercial-scale Hydropanels in over 50 countries and in some of the world’s driest climates, including in deserts in the U.S. Southwest, Australia, the United Arab Emirates, and Australia. It recently introduced the somewhat smaller Hydropanel R3 for residential use. In a news release, the company says that in temperate climates, one R3 unit can produce the equivalent of 180 16.9-ounce bottles of water per month.
“Our goal is to make perfect quality drinking water available to as many people as possible,” says Colin Goddard, Vice President of Business Development for SOURCE Global, PB. “Nothing is more impactful than making a positive difference in people’s lives. Seeing the reaction of someone who has never had access to clean drinking water, drink our water from a tap in their home for the first time, never gets old. It’s why we do what we do.”
