TerraLiner:12 m Globally Mobile Beach House/Class-A Crossover w 6x6 Hybrid Drivetrain

[egn]

What we are using are the Pentek CBC-10 filters to clean up drinking water and UV desinfection to keep the water pure in a smaller drinking water tank.

Of course, the water shouldn't be really dirty, but any water from a well, clean looking from spring or lake will do. We had never any problems with water the last 8 years. The filter cartridge last for 30.000 - 60.000 l, or 6 - 12 months depending on quality. I exchange the cartridge once a year, it costs about 20 €. In 8 years, which is effectively 1 year full-time use, we have used only about 12.000 l water.

At the moment I don't think that for us a full blown water maker system is really necessary and worth the hassle when traveling. There is a lot of maintenance necessary to keep the system in a pure state. And regular filtration systems like Katadyn, Seagull, ... and the one we use are pretty good in removing bad things from water available at most places.

 

[charlieaarons]

I use a 3 stage filter: synthetic fleece element, iodine resin secreting block and finally activated carbon block to remove iodine. With the option of dropping 7 Accepta ClO2 producing tablets (gives 4ppm ClO2 per 30L) into each tank for water that is likely to be contaminated with bacteria or protozoa.

http://www.accepta.com/water-treatm...lorine-dioxide-tablets-4ppm-in-30-litres-8505

Charlie

 

[dwh]

Not an expert, but I have looked into it in the past...


Marine watermakers come in basically 3 types: distillation, filtration, and atmospheric condensing. Atmospheric condensing watermakers are, these days, more often referred to as water "generators" or Atmospheric Water Generators (AWGs).

I like the idea of AWGs for RV use, because it actually MAKES water rather than simply processing water from some other source.

Gr8 Water sells that type, (built by Ocean Breeze):

http://www.gr8water.net/

http://www.oceanbreezeac.com/water_makers.php

Gr8 Water also makes wastewater processing plants, BTW. They mention on their site that their residential AWG plant can also be had with an add-on to provide up to 12k BTU of air conditioning. This gives a useful clue as to power consumption, which is nice since their site is damned skimpy on technical details such as power consumption.

Their "slick sheets" page shows a range of unit sizes. The smallest makes 8 gallons per day and the slick sheet says 3.5kw/120v.

http://content.stockpr.com/gr8water/db/Slick+Sheets/224/pdf/WFC-1E_2014.pdf


That's seems like a lot of power, but I think it's deceptive. I think that 3.5kw is probably a 24 hour consumption figure. I don't think it uses 3,500 watts continuously to produce 8 gallons per day. It would be drawing 30 amps at 120v and that would be rather stupid. If that were the case, it would be setup to to use 240v, like the larger units in the product line. Unfortunately, my guess doesn't quite work out from the other direction...3,500w per day / 24 hours is only 145w per hour...and that seems too low (but may actually be correct for an 8 gallon/day unit).

For comparison, The EcoloBlue 30 is also rated at 8 gallons per day, and according to the manual, draws 750w-1050w total wattage, 250w-450w operation wattage:

http://store.ecoloblue-world.com/en/index.php?controller=attachment&id_attachment=2

But it also has UV and I would assume, cooling (it IS a "water cooler"), and a defrost heater. One nice feature of the EcoloBlue 30, is that it can be had with a city water hookup option, so in RV use it could do double duty as an AWG and also as a filtration unit for water accquired from an outside source. Requires a minimum of 35% relative humidity.

For further comparison, the EB 300 commercial unit, produces 80 gallons per day, and uses (from memory without checking my facts) 4.8kw continuous power (at 380v). It also weighs over 700 lbs.

http://store.ecoloblue-world.com/en/48-ecoloblue-300.html


There are many other manufacturers of AWGs. I've seen typical office or home type "water cooler replacement" AWG is sizes from 3 gallons per day up to around 10 gallons per day. Sorry bio, I don't have links as I did the research some years ago, and neglected to copy over my bookmarks when switching computers...


The question that comes to mind of course is: "What about in the desert?"

I don't think it's a big issue. Most AWGs seem to require a minimum of around 40% relative humidity to produce their full rated output, but will still produce with less humidity, at a reduced rate. I lived for 5 years in Palm Springs, Ca., where it is very dry. Even so, at Palm Springs International Airport, the average annual relative humidity was (IIRC) 51%. But that was annual average. Many (MANY) days it was 10%-20%.

But anectodally... When I was in IT and living in Palm Springs, I had many hotels and casinos on my client list. I was at one, which was hosting a conference on AWGs, and there was a whole line of units, from various manufacturers, setup in the hall outside of the conference area. This was in the summer, and every one of those units was making water just fine. I don't know how far below their rated output they were producing, but they were making water.

EcoloBlue does have a .pdf which shows some humidity and termperature data for various sites in California, including Palm Springs:

http://ecoloblue.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/California.pdf

 

[biotect]

Hi egn, Charlie, dwh,

Many thanks for that quick feedback.

dwh, thanks for the excellent info about “atmospheric water generators” (AWG's), machines that condense water from air. I was wondering what those were, as I glanced through the products on the various websites that I listed. They look quite a bit different from Watermakers, which, as you suggest, are really just elaborate filtering or distilling machines.

There's much to be said for AWG's, because they condense water vapor that would otherwise fall as rain. So water generators in effect collect water that it about as pure as H20 can get in a natural state, just as long as it's not mixed with radioactive fallout……

This may seem a stupid question, but thought I should ask anyway:

Does rainfall still contain some small quantities of impurities that would need to filtered out? Can certain kinds of man-made chemicals go “airborne”, and fall to earth mixed with rain? Or could one reliably expect that an atmospheric water generator would produce pure H2O that needs no further filtration?

If such H20 could still benefit from further filtration, then as egn suggests, a Katadyn or Seagull filter in the kitchen may prove sufficient.

However, neither of these filters is a water recycling system, as proposed by Wayno. And so too, it would seem that an “atmospheric water generator” cannot function at the same time as a water recycler + filterer, a system that filters water piped in from a lake or stream. Whereas a watermaker like the Slingshot could do both: it could filter water brought in from outside sources, as well as filter water recycled from the shower and the washing machine.


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We can break down the problem into three components:

1. Water replenishment

2. Water recycling

3. Water purification

Water replenishment is bringing new water into the system from outside; water recycling is re-using the water that the system already has; and water purification can take place in different locations and to different degrees. For instance, water could be purified one way during the process of replenishment (via a Watermaker, or an atmospheric water generator), and then filtered even further in the kitchen using a Seagull purifier. But used water from a bath, shower, or washing machine might be purified in a slightly different way, than water brought up from a lake, an oasis, or the seaside by a Watermaker.

The problem of having a standard bathtub, then, is primarily a problem of replenishment and/or recycling. If one uses 80 liters a day to take a bath, or the same total amount to take two separate “regular length” showers that use 40 liters each, and if one wants to be able to boondock for 1 month or more, then some kind of replenishment and/or recycling system becomes absolutely essential. Even with a 1000 liter tank like that monster-sized 8x8 UniCat, one would still run out of water after just 12 days, merely to satisfy bathing needs.

Brief Aside: egn, it's very impressive that you and your wife are now down to 15 l/person/shower. And needless to say, all your earlier suggestions about how a shower column should be configured for maximum efficiency will be taken as "read". For instance, the TerraLiner's shower should have a thermostat with programmable presets for different persons, so that when the water first exits the shower head, it immediately exits at exactly the right temperature. No fiddling necessary with the mixer-tap trying to find the "right" setting, thereby wasting valuable water before getting down to business. So too, no use of an aerated shower-head, but rather, a regular shower head to get an initial "full blast" of water coverage. And so on -- all discussed much earlier in the thread, in post #164 at http://http://www.expeditionportal....pedition-RV-w-Rigid-Torsion-Free-Frame/page17 , and post #185 at http://www.expeditionportal.com/for...pedition-RV-w-Rigid-Torsion-Free-Frame/page19 .

Now if the TerraLiner were equipped with only an atmospheric water generator, then one might hope that this could generate at least 100 liters per day, to keep up with all water consumption. But not much more than that. So the EcoloBlue 300 AWG seems like overkill, because it can produce up to 300 liters per day – see http://store.ecoloblue-world.com/en/48-ecoloblue-300.html and http://store.ecoloblue-world.com/en/11-industrial-commercial:







And as you stated, dwh, the EcoloBlue 300 AWG weighs a whopping 380 kg.

The problem seems to be that EcoloBlue's industrial products are all much larger than this, some producing 600, 1,000, 3,000, 5,000 or even 10,000 liters per day – see http://store.ecoloblue-world.com/en/11-industrial-commercial . At the other end of the spectrum, when one turns instead to EcoloBlue's residential products, these all seem to produce only 8 gallons or 30 liters per day – see http://store.ecoloblue-world.com/en/6-atmospheric-water-generators , http://store.ecoloblue-world.com/en/158-ecoloblue-30me-maximum-efficiency.html , http://store.ecoloblue-world.com/en/175-ecoloblue-30-standard-alkaline-appliance.html , http://store.ecoloblue-world.com/en/177-ecoloblue-alkaline-30s.html , etc.:


​


In other words, not nearly enough. And no weights for these units given either. But lots of videos about the EcoloBlue 30 available on the web:






As these videos make clear, there is nothing at all "simple" about these machines, and they too use Reverse Osmosis and UV sterilization, even though they are AWG's, and not Watermakers......

Turning to Oceanbreeze, although it has a webpage and a YouTube channel, further information about its products seems hard to come by – see http://www.oceanbreezeac.com/water_makers.php and http://www.youtube.com/user/OceanBreezeAC :






But perhaps Oceanbreeze is merely a distributor for gr8water products? And in the case of gr8water, happily enough the range runs from a small unit that produces just 8 gallons or 30 liters per day, to the largest unit that produces 11,356 liters per day – see http://www.gr8water.net/products/atmospheric-water-generators and http://www.gr8water.net/products/product-slick-sheets . The two gr8water units most suited to the TerraLiner are slightly different shapes, but both produce 151 liters per day, which is roughly in the right ball-park:



...


Again, for whatever reason, no information given about the weights of these units, just their dimensions. dwh, might you know how to find out the weights of these AWGs?

But again, these units only produce water; they don't recycle it. Should this matter?

What if the atmospheric water generator breaks down? Taking “normal” showers, washing clothes, cooking meals, and flushing the toilet, will probably consume somewhere between 60 – 100 liters a day. So even with a 600 or 700 liter water tank as per egn's Blue Thunder serving as back up, one could remain boondocked at best only another 6 to 10 days.


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Now perhaps the system gets too complicated if one throws in a relatively small, compact, light-weight Watermaker after all. egn wrote:

What we are using are the Pentek CBC-10 filters to clean up drinking water and UV desinfection to keep the water pure in a smaller drinking water tank.

Of course, the water shouldn't be really dirty, but any water from a well, clean looking from spring or lake will do. We had never any problems with water the last 8 years. The filter cartridge last for 30.000 - 60.000 l, or 6 - 12 months depending on quality. I exchange the cartridge once a year, it costs about 20 €. In 8 years, which is effectively 1 year full-time use, we have used only about 12.000 l water.

At the moment I don't think that for us a full blown water maker system is really necessary and worth the hassle when traveling. There is a lot of maintenance necessary to keep the system in a pure state.....

But the TerraLiner is being designed with “redundancy” in mind everywhere else. And so a Watermaker serving as backup for the AWG seems like a good idea, too. Furthermore, the Watermaker would be the piece of machinery that recycles waste water from showers and the washing machine, so it seems like a necessary component of a truly complete system. And if/when the AWG eventually breaks down, the Watermaker could serve as backup, pulling in water from a stream, lake, well, or oasis. Also remember: sailboats and power cruisers have been using Watermakers for decades, so I see no reason why one should fear the added “complexity” they introduce into the system. Watermaker technology is not new, various kinds of Watermakers have been preforming well in rugged marine environments for years, and so introducing some kind of Watermaker into the system to handle recycling seems like a rather uncontroversial step.

And if it's ever perfected, the Slingshot might be the perfect Watermaker for the job....:clapping:

egn: your Pentek CBC-10 filters could not really act alone as part of a shower-and-washing-machine-water recycling system, could they? Would you be willing to drink the waste-water from showers after it had been passed through only a Pentek filter, and nothing else?





What do others think? Would others feel comfortable filling up their freshwater tanks from a stream in Africa or India, purifying their drinking water only using a Carbon filter such as egn's Pentek?

Perhaps I am being a bit paranoid here because of a bout of "Giardia" that I once caught in Nepal -- see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giardia . Sure, I had some Metronidazole with me (which Americans commonly call "Flagyl"), and it seemed to go away -- see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metronidazole . But then after a few months the diarrhea came back with a vengeance; turns out that the brush with Giardia triggered an autoimmune response that left my upper colon very unhappy for years. After two or three years of chronic diarrhea I was finally diagnosed with Crohn's Disease -- see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crohn's_disease . I had only about one meter of fistulas, so I was lucky: they caught it early. But it took two barium enemas and two colonoscopies before they finally succeeded in identifying the problem. The wonderful gastroenterologist who found the Crohn's immediately put me on a ton of Sulfasalazine, and I am now a lucky member of the 10 % of people for whom Crohn's disappears, if caught early enough -- see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfasalazine . My gastroenterologist did not have to operate to remove meters of intestine blocked by incurable fistulas.....:Wow1: ...I am no longer symptomatic, I don't have to live with Crohn's for the rest of my life, and so I no longer take the Sulfasalazine.

Now if you know anything about Giardia and Crohn's, or if you've gotten sick from other water-borne disease in the Third world, then you will understand my paranoia here. The story that I recounted was a nightmare that lasted years. Not weeks, not months, but years. I am just lucky that I am German-Canadian who has lived in various countries where health care is free, and I did not have to pay out of pocket for all the tests and procedures.

So to put things bluntly: I personally would never trust just a carbon filter. Not after what I've been through. No doubt carbon filters have their value, but for me, merely as one step in a multi-stage process that I know will protect me from Giardia, and another relapse of Crohn's.

Remember, India is a country where 72 % of rural people practice "open defecation", and 62 % of all Hindu households, urban or rural, practice open defecation -- see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_defecation , http://www.economist.com/news/asia/...es-not-just-building-lavatories-also-changing , http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2014/07/daily-chart-13 , http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-27775327 , http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/08/one-billion-open-defecation_n_5289049.html , http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/aug/28/toilets-india-health-rural-women-safety , http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?sid=aErNiP_V4RLc&pid=newsarchive , http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/letters/open-defecation/article5474949.ece , http://opendefecation.org/news/ , and http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/the-long-and-short-of-open-defecation/article4505664.ece :


[video=vimeo;97798203]https://vimeo.com/97798203[/video]... ....



Nepal is little different, because 80 % of Nepalis are Hindu -- see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Nepal . For why religious affiliation should be culturally connected to open defecation, read the articles whose links I just provided. So on my own view, I suffered for years because the cooks on our trek were not sufficiently clean, or they did not boil the cooking and drinking water long enough, or something. All of us on the trek got sick, and we basically got sick via pathogens in effluent that covers the Nepalese and Indian countryside, thanks to open defecation.


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Also (and this is a really minor point by way of comparison): Could the Pentek purify sea-water, when the TerrraLiner is parked on a beach beside the ocean?


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Returning to bathtub design, this discussion of “water replenishment” possibilities as raised by Wayno has made me wonder all over again what kind of bathtub arrangement might be best. With an AWG and/or a Watermaker constantly replenishing the system, a more regular 80-liter, fill-and-empty bathtub seems possible. If a gr8water AWG produces 150 liters per day, then water consumption simply won't be a problem. But should one count on the AWG always working?

The Shachagra solution is inherently conservative and prudential. Even if all water replenishment and water recycling systems fail, with the Shachagra solution in place, extended boondocking could continue. Via a combination of dwh “steam showers” + long soaks in the “Furo” hot-tub, bathing water usage could be kept to 20 liters per day or less. And so the TerraLiner's water tank would go very, very far. There's also something aesthetically pleasing about the idea of soaking in a big 265 liter hot-tub, as opposed to “just” an 80 liter bathtub.

Anyway, just a few more thoughts “on the fly”, so to speak. Wayno, many thanks for reviving this thread's thinking about the topic of water replenishment and recycling.

Now back to preparing my series of posts advocating the tremendous value of the Chinese Six….

All best wishes,



Biotect

 

[safas]

There is EB100:
http://store.ecoloblue-world.com/en/165-uae-eb100.html
But that's not enough, remember that they rate their systems at ~90% humidity:
http://store.ecoloblue-world.com/en/index.php?controller=attachment&id_attachment=2
At 40% they get half of the rated capacity.
At 35% one third.
At 30% a quarter.
I suppose that below that efficiency drops off the cliff, so you can't rely on even big units supplying you with enough water.
Might be useful for some climates, cool trick in others, but IMO not generic enough to be worthwhile.

AC with water generation as auxiliary function could be nice, but unlikely worth the cost...

Answering your other question, all AWG systems use filtration or even reverse osmosis, so the water is not clean.

ADDED: 30 makes 33 l/day and takes '250-450W'. Assuming (optimistic) 33l and 350 W that's 254 Wh/l.
ADDED: Distillation at commercial scale can get down to 8.83 Wh/l according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distillation#Multi-effect_distillation
ADDED: Katadyn reverse osmosis ranges between 7.44 and 8.42 Wh/l. 1, 2
ADDED: Reverse osmosis can get down below 3Wh/l according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_osmosis#Energy_recovery

 

[Haf-E]

Also: could the Pentek filter purify sea-water, when the TerrraLiner is parked on a beach beside the ocean?

You can't purify sea water - the salts go right through the filter. Same for much of the detergents (which often are salts) used with bathing. Removing salt requires a reverse osmosis system and its significant energy consumption and large amount of "unused" water which then has higher concentration of pollutants in it. That waste water could be used for flushing or something perhaps - but as previously mentioned, the water will become "putrid" quickly if it is stored.

Reverse Osmosis is practical for marine applications because they are surrounded with ocean which can both supply the initial water and accept the higher concentration brine without being affected. Not so with a tank of gray water.

High efficiency RO or distillation involves energy recovery systems which are not practical to implement on a small sized system unfortunately.

It may be possible to operate these energy intensive systems while the engine is underway however with minimal impact on the fuel economy.

 

[campo]

Hi Bio and the others
Just came back from Bad Kissingen Germany adventure exposition and did not find the time yet to read all this.
One more important info about your slide outs that I got out of a discussion with a important bodybuilder
is that a slide out of 50cm ...slides in for also 50cm. In order to get the strength you'll need a 100cm mechanism.
So if you do it both sides consider that you'll only dispose of about 50 cm with passage in the middle when both sides are slide in.

and some pictures I made last year...

 

[dwh]

Two words: "acid rain". Dirt is also a problem for rainwater collection - the roof will probably be dirty. I think Bliss Mobile does both greywater recycling and rainwater collection using basically the same system. Dirty water into one tank, filter and pump into another tank.

I think reverse osmosis is entirely do-able. The folks at Great Aussie Adventure like it so much, they developed and are marketing their own small RO system:

http://www.greataussieadventure.com/



I don't see recycling grey water as a problem. First filter it to get the "gunk" out. Then reverse osmosis to get the rest. The leftover wastewater from the RO - into the toilet to be incinerated. You can also use the RO to process water from an outside source - such as an African stream (or...ugh...the Ganges).

I've previously thought that it might be nice to have a grey water tank that is also an incinerating oven, with a water vapor recovery ability. Basically a combination distiller/incinerator. That way you get 100% water recovery from the grey water, and all the gunk just gets ashed.


(BTW bio - I meant to mention this earlier and forgot: You said something to effect of, "Eco-John vacu-flush." I don't think so. As I recall, the Eco-John uses an auger screw to transport the waste to the oven.)


The point to the AWG is not that it supplies all required water to a total loss water system - but that it steadily replenishes what is essentially a closed loop system that leaks a lot. The AWG is basically only there to just keep the system topped off by replacing what gets lost to the toilet, or through sweating, breathing, evaporation and/or taking a leak out in the woods.


I would just use the Bliss Method:

"Water, Collection and Recycling

The availability of fresh water is not only facilitated by generous water tanks, but also by fitting every model with a state of the art water filtration system. A water maker is supplied standard in the larger models and optional for the 15,13,11 ft body. Through the combination of UV light, carbon filter-, and high pressure membrane technology, you are able to convert grey water (i.e. non-drinkable waste water) back into safe potable water. Besides, water from natural resources -such as lakes and rivers- can also be converted into drinking water. Every Bliss Mobil model offers the possibility of collecting rainwater on the roof, which can be converted to safe drinking water as well. As such, the virtual water capacity far exceeds the capacity of the holding tanks."

http://www.blissmobil.com/images/Brochure/brochure_eng.pdf


That quote above says, "A water maker is supplied standard in the larger models and optional for the 15,13,11 ft body." I think their "water maker" is a reverse osmosis unit:

http://www.blissmobil.com/en/products-en/23-foot/water-23ft/1117-recycling-of-water-23-ft.html


In other words: Take on outside water by dumping it into the grey water tank, and let the recycling system clean it up. With RO as part of the recycling system, you might even be able to just dump buckets of sea water into the grey tank and let the filtration system deal with it.

Add an 8g/day AWG, to keep the system topped off, and you might never actually need to refill the water tanks from an outside source.

 

[dwh]

BTW, the original Wotthehellizat had a bathtub. Standard home unit as I recall. You might hit Rob up for some real world feedback on that. He's around here somewhere.

 

[biotect]

Hi dwh: interesting detail. I didn't know that. It would be interesting to find out how often he used used it, under what circumstances, where, etc.

Rob may have also had a bathtub because he's a photographer, and bathtubs come in handy when making large prints; that is to say, in the old chemical days before the advent of Epson photo-quality printers.....:ylsmoke:


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Hi Safas,

Many thanks for the link to the PDF, at http://store.ecoloblue-world.com/en/index.php?controller=attachment&id_attachment=2 . Would you know how to get a PDF for the range of EcoloBlue's current industrial models? And in particular, a PDF for the EB100 as well as the EB300? The EB100 seems like a very new model, and so there is no further information yet on the webpage.

In the page on the right below, taken from the PDF, the EcoloBlue 30 series is listed as weighing 54 kg, which is not bad, about 120 pounds:



,,,,



But it would still be better to know the weight and dimensions of the EB100, and so too, the weights of the two models made by gr8water:




...




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1. The Triple-Threat EcoloBlue: an AWG ("Atmospheric Water Generator) + a Watermaker + a Water Recycler


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After listening a second time to the videos about the EcoloBlue 30, I realized that these could probably also function as Watermakers. As you suggest, all AWG systems use filtration, and the EcoloBlue 30 is no exception. It uses reverse osmosis as well as UV light in its holding tank to kill microbes. So in fact, a well-designed AWG could function as both an AWG as well as a Watermaker. In one of the videos below the presenter makes it clear that one can hook up a hose to the EcoloBlue 30 and feed water to it directly, which it will then purify as usual, using reverse-osmosis.






So Haf-E, it seems like the EcoloBlue could also purify seawater as well as the soapy water from showers and the washing machine..... ... At least in theory, because the EcoloBlue has a reverse-osmosis filter. As for the energy required, I have no idea. The TerraLiner will be covered with the most efficient solar panels available, as well as roll-out awnings that have built-in thin-film flexible solar. So perhaps some of that energy could power the AWG.

And, as you suggest:

It may be possible to operate these energy intensive systems while the engine is underway however with minimal impact on the fuel economy.

Now safas, given what you just documented about the "fine print" of degraded performance in low-humidity weather, a 160 liter per day model seems a must. But I still think the EcoloBlue 300 may prove much too large. Even if humidity were only 40 %, the EcoloBlue 300 would still produce 150 liters a day, more than enough. And given that the EcoloBlue can also function as a Watermaker and a Water Recycler, the lack of efficiency when humidity is low seems much less of a concern. If humidity is low, then just find a stream, a lake, or a well.....

However, notice something else. Every liter of water weighs one kilogram: that's the very definition of a liter. So even if the EcoloBlue 300 weighs 380 kg, it would probably still prove more preferable to carry a 600 Liter freshwater tank + an EcoloBlue 300, instead of a 1000 Liter freshwater tank. The EcoloBlue 300 will more than make up for its weight, via the amount of water it produces enroute, water that one does not have to carry; and that, indeed, one cannot carry. One simply cannot boon-dock in total isolation for three months, if one is dependent exclusively on one's freshwater tank for water. Carrying a 2000 liter tanks is simply out of the question. And even with a 1000 liter tank and recycling, one will still need to replenish water somehow from an outside source.

So it now seems clear to me that some kind of "multi-use" AWG -- an AWG that in a pinch could also function as a Watermaker and a Water Recycler -- must be an essential piece of equipment for the TerraLiner.


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2. Most of the World is More Humid than People Tend to Think


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Now, as for the question of low humidity, a map of "Average Annual Relative Humidity Worldwide" suggests that most of the planet for most of the year is above 50%. Only certain regions, for instance, the American Southwest, the Andes and the Tibetan plateaus, the central Sahara, and the Arabian peninsula, have an average annual relative humidity of less than 25 %:





Interestingly, central Australia is not that bad, much of it in the 30 % range. The southern coast of the Arabian peninsula is also very humid, and only the most central parts of the Sahara dip below 25 %. The truly non-humid places are actually the high-altitude plateaus, namely, Tibet and the Altiplano in Bolivia. And on the Tibetan plateau, there are plenty of large freshwater lakes where the TerraLiner could replenish via Watermaking instead.

One very useful way of thinking about places that are truly arid, versus those that are merely "semi-arid" or "semi-desert", is via the Budkyko-Lettau dryness ratio -- see [video]http://www.proz.com/kudoz/English/environment_ecology/2767307-budyko_lettau_dryness_ratio.html[/video] . The formula for making the calculation is below, but I am not going to explain it here. The important point is that this ratio was invented to show how deserts are not created equal. There are different types of deserts (some hot, some cold), and deserts also vary greatly in terms of dryness. And finally, places that may not immediately seem like deserts, for instance, the Tibetan plateau, are actually some of the driest places on earth:





As the slide on the left suggests, the American Southwest is not a "desert" in quite the same league as the Sahara, the Arabian peninsula, or the Gobi desert. So too, Australia scores only a "7" in relation to the Southwest's "8".

But it gets even more interesting: places that we tend to think of as very dry, for instance the northern coast of Africa, may be dry in terms of precipitation, but they are not dry in terms of humidity. Another excellent example would be the southern coast of the Arabian Peninsula.

Here is a more detailed map of Africa, demonstrating just how useful an atmospheric water generator might prove, especially along North Africa's Mediterranean coast; and indeed, along most of Africa's coast:





Note that in Europe the average annual relative humidity is very high, in the range of 75 % or above in northern European countries. But humidity is also still 50 % or higher in those Mediterranean countries that popular imagination tends to think of as "dry" or semi-arid, such as Spain and Greece:





It's worth remembering this when we examine other places that are genuinely arid, like the American Southwest and northern Mexico, the Central Sahara, the Bolivian Altiplano, or the Tibetan plateau. Sunny European "Club Med" countries are not arid in the same way that southern Arizona is arid, and even less so in the way that the central Sahara is arid.

In other words, even in southern Mediterranean countries an AWG would still work (on average) at better than half its peak output. In Mediterranean countries like Spain, Greece, and Italy, an AWG would work slightly less well during the sunny dry months of July and August, and much better during the wet winter months. And in northern Europe an AWG would work like gangbusters, because northern Europe is so humid and wet year round.


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Of course in all places the relative humidity varies from season to season, even in tropical rain-forests. As luck would have it, there are two good websites that map relative humidity worldwide on an ongoing basis, at http://www.intellicast.com/Global/Humidity.aspx?location=default&region=EAFRI and http://www.findlocalweather.com/weather_maps/humidity_africa.html . We'll be seeing lots of maps from these websites in what follows below.

Here is a map of relative humidity worldwide on Tuesday, June 9th, 2015:






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3. The Southwestern United States is really not that dry -- at least not when compared to the Central Sahara, or Tibet


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Right now (June, 2015) the United States and Mexico seem comparatively desiccated, especially in relation to their average annual levels of relative humidity:






According to the first map above, the average annual relative humidity of central Mexico and much of the western Great Plains is in the 30 - 50 % range. The contrast to the central Sahara or the Tibetan Plateau could not be more clear: in the central Sahara average annual relative humidity drops to 10 - 20 %, and on the Tibetan plateau, it seems to go below 10 %. So one could say that, comparatively speaking, the American Southwest is really not that dry. Certainly not dry in the same sense that the Sahara is dry. Here is the world map of relative humidity again:





Yes, according to maps of precipitation shown above on the right, the western United States sure does get much less rainfall than the eastern United States. But an annual average relative humidity level of 30 - 50 %, is very different from a humidity level of 10 - 20 % as seen in the central Sahara, or 0 - 10 % as seen on the Tibetan plateau.

And yet on June 9th, just yesterday, according to the maps below, the relative humidity in the western United States and northern Mexico fell to somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 - 30 %. In Mexico City relative humidity was 19 %, in Salt Lake City it was 21 %, and in Denver 32 %.







It's now summer, of course, so one should expect as much. in northern Mexico and the American Southwest relative humidity is bound to be much lower during the summer, and much higher during the winter rainy season.



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4. Humidity is not the Same Thing as Precipitation: the Example of the North African Coast


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Now conversely, notice how positively vapor-saturated North Africa and the Levant were yesterday, even though it's now summer there too. Tel Aviv and Alexandria both had 78 % relative humidity, Cairo had 69 %, Algiers had a whopping 94 % (!!), Tangier had 77 %, and Marrakech had 78 %. So too, the southern coast of the Arabian peninsula is currently heavy with vapor, and Muscat had 66 % humidity:





One might be tempted to explain this away as just a temporary fluke that runs against trend, but it's not. This may seem like an oxymoron, but much of the north African coast could be classified as "humid desert", as an arid landscape without much in the way of rivers, lakes, or trees, and with comparatively little actual rainfall, except up in the mountains of Morocco and Algeria. And yet, the north African coast has an oddly high level of average annual relative humidity.

Here again is a map of Africa's map of average annual relative humidity, and beside it, the map for relative humidity on June 9th, 2015. Notice how similar they are. Yesterday was a fairly typical day in Africa, for humidity:





Next, here are some reasonably "fine grained" maps of African annual precipitation, i.e. rainfall:






And here is my favorite, because it also seems to read as a relief map. The parts that get rainfall are in purple:





Now compare again to a zoomed-in map of average annual relative humidity for the North African coast:





Yes, there is some correlation between precipitation (rainfall) and relative humidity over on the left, in Morocco and Algeria. But there's much less correlation in Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt. According to the maps of precipitation, the north African coastline between the Sinai Peninsula and Tunis is almost completely bereft of rainfall, with the sole except of the "green bump" where the Libyan city of Ben Ghazi is located -- see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benghazi .


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And indeed, Benghazi is relatively green, for a North-African city:







But the big mystery is the coastline of Egypt and eastern Libya, where there is virtually no precipitation whatsoever, and yet there is lots of humidity. There is as much humidity along the coast of Egypt, for instance, as there is along the coast of Algeria. But according to the "Köppen" climate classification, only the northern bit of Tunisia, the coast of Algeria, northern Morocco, and the isolated micro-climates of Tripoli and Bengahazi properly classify as Mediterranean. Otherwise, the coastlines of Southern Tunisia, Libya and Egypt are pure desert:






There are different ways of visualizing how the Libyan, southern Tunisian, and Egyptian deserts run right up to the coast. Some of my favorite are satellite images, photographs that very clearly demonstrate where the green ends, and the sand starts:






Or, where the sand ends, and the Mediteranean begins.







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The answer to this puzzle, in one word, is Fog.


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4. "Coastal Fog Deserts": Dry Places dripping with Water Vapor


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ied in terms of




Africa as a whole presented a fairly predictable picture as well, it's "humidity map" on , more or less corresponding to its


2 maps -- repeat earlier one

Again, if you look at the map below of Africa's annual average, you'll see that this is not abnormal. The Mediterranean coast of Africa tends to be quite humid.





As usual, Europe had high humidity, even or indeed especially the southern Mediterranean countries:


5 maps -- repeat earlier one



South and Central America + the Caribbean were "normal", with almost everywhere showing high relative humidity, in the 70 - 90 % range, in line with the annual average; except for the Altiplano, which was also predictable, but predictably dry, just 18 % relative humidity in La Paz, Bolivia:


6 maps


Central, South, and Southeast Asia, however, were a bit different than the norm. Here is a more detailed map of the Average Annual Relative Humidity of Asia plus Australia:

1 map

Yesterday everything was broadly "normal" in most places. For instance, the Monsoon has begun in India, and it comes up from the south, so the south was especially humid, between 80 - 90 %:

1 map

But this mirrors the annual average humidity pattern for India as a whole.

Southeast Asia, southern China, and Japan were all predictably very humid, with relative humidity between 80 - 90 %, and even reaching as high as 94 % in Tokyo, and 100 % in southern Japan.


2 maps

Siberia was also predictably humid:


1 map


The big anomaly yesterday, relative to the annual average, was Tibet. Tibet is a high-altitude desert, and if you glance again above, you'll see that it maps as bone white for Average Annual Relative Humidity. But yesterday the Tibetan plateau was much more humid than on average:


3 maps



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Australia too was more humid than average. Again, recalling the map above, in the very center Australia averages somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 % humidity, versus above 50 % around Perth, and above 60 % on the southeastern and eastern coasts. But yesterday relative humidity in the very center, in Alice Springs, was 76 %, in Perth it was 72 %, and in Sydney it hit 94 %:


3 Maps


The Queensland coast is always very humid, a tropical rainforest, so 94 % relative humidity in Cairns should not be that surprising:


1 Map





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3. The Point to These Maps



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Those who have been following my thinking about the TerraLiner, know that I like to get doggedly "empirical" about the kinds of climates and terrains it is supposed to travel through. For instance, unless one is a Canadian who grew up in Alberta or Manitoba, in general it's difficult to seriously imagine that people could live in large cities that have average winter temperatures of −10 °C , with overnight lows on some days as low as −40 °C, and the temperature sometimes remaining below −18 °C for several weeks.

And that's just the prairie provinces in Canada. In central Siberia, average winter temperatures are −30 °C, with cold snaps of −50 °C or −55 °C. But winter is by far the best time to travel in Siberia, because the roads are frozen and hence passable. During the summer when everything thaws out, Siberia becomes one vast impassible swamp, and communities become veritable islands. So if the TerraLiner wants to visit Siberia, it has to be designed to handle −55 °C. Or similarly, if it wants to travel around Tibet, its diesel-electric generators have to be turbocharged, and they should work well at 16,000 - 18,000 feet, the height of the highest passes on important Tibetan roads. Driving at 18,000 feet may seem unreal to someone born and raised in the continental United States, and who has never visited the Himalayas. But places and roads this high really do exist. The Tibetans have inhabited the plateau for thousands of years, and built up a vibrant civilization with a number of large cities, organized around hill forts and/or huge monasteries, usually one and the same thing, called "Gompas". These are wonderful to visit, but if the TerraLiner is going to visit them, it has to be designed in an empirically realistic way.

So when assessing the value of technology like an "atmospheric water generator" or AWG, it would be a mistake for Americans living in California or the Southwest to take their own semi-arid climate as "normal". Most of the world is a lot wetter than the American Southwest. Indeed, almost all of South America, with the major exception of the Altiplano, is wetter than the Southwest, and certainly all of Europe is, with the possible exception of a bit of Spain where they filmed the Sphagetti Westerns. So the little round-the-world of "average annual relative humidity" was designed to demonstrate in an empirically concrete way, that an AWG would prove a major asset in most climates. In many parts of the world for most of the year it would be running very efficiently, in climates that have 70, 80, or 90 % humidity. And many supposedly very dry places, like the Mediterranean coast of Africa, or the southern coast of the Arabian peninsula, are actually quite humid too.

There may not be many above-ground year-round streams or open lakes along the Mediterranean coast of Africa, and so a dedicated Watermaker like the Slingshot may find itself at a bit of a loss, trying to get to an oasis where it can throw a pipe in a well. But even though there's not much water above-ground, there is still plenty of water in the air, in a climate that tends to be very humid, even though paradoxically semi-arid at the same time. And in such places, an AWG would prove its worth.

In short, many thanks dwh for reminding us of his earlier AWG suggestion. An AWG will work, and it will work well across much of the surface of the earth. Yesterday, in the middle of the Australian desert in Alice Springs, where the relative humidity was 76 %, an AWG would have worked like gangbusters.



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4. One Final Request



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Just one final request. In post #1442 at http://www.expeditionportal.com/for...edition-RV-w-Rigid-Torsion-Free-Frame/page145, I provided an enormous list of companies that manufacture Watermakers intended mostly for marine use. But many of those companies also manufacture "atmospheric water generators" of exactly the kind that dwh described. I then strongly suspect that an AWG built by one of these companies will prove a good deal more robust and able to handle the bumps and jolts of overlanding travel, than an AWG built by EcoloBlue..... I may be wrong about EcoBlue, but they don't seem particularly oriented towards vehicular applications?

What's really wanted is an AWG that, just like an EcoloBlue, has a reverse-osmosis "Watermaker" already built right in. That way when a remote oasis is at hand, and the humidity in the Central Sahara has dropped below 15 %, and the AWG just won't work, the TerraLiner can still replenish its water supply. Ditto vis-a-vis the Tibetan plateau, which is perhaps even drier than the Sahara.....


In effect, what the TerraLinere needs a combined AWG/Watermaker, built tough for marine use.


So if anyone ever comes across one of these, PLEASE POST!!!

All best wishes,



Biotect


Wayno: I know this might sound a bit deflationary, but that's actually what the TerraLiner needs; and not a Slingshot. The Slingshot also does not seem designed (at least so far) for vehicular use, but rather, seems intended mainly as a stationary source of clean drinking water for remote, poor villages in the Third World. If Dean Kamen perfects a Slingshot that combines an AWG with a Watermaker, then great. But until that day, the TerraLiner needs something a bit different..... :ylsmoke:


dwh: Will respond to your most recent (truly excellent!!) post just after I've finished adding all the images and maps to this series......:wings: