Can Droughts be Alleviated – or Even Eliminated?
Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.
I look at the video on the news and am struck by two opposing images. In some places in the world lack of water is causing famine and death. In other parts of the globe flooding is washing away homes and people. Both are happening more frequently, but weather is something that we can’t control. As some wise wag once said,
Moving water from flooded areas to those afflicted by drought isn’t possible. But what if those places that are considered dry really do have water; it’s there, but unseen and until now not deliverable?
Photo Source: moseswestfoundation.org
His mission has been to provide a means for people to produce clean water through a technology called Atmospheric Water Generation.
Then I heard about Moses A. West. He is a retired Captain of the United States Army who has dedicated his life to the United States and the people around the world. His mission has been to provide a means for people to produce clean water through a technology called Atmospheric Water Generation.
Mr. West learned about the hydrologic cycle in elementary school, recalling that water is a closed-loop cycle. It moves between the oceans and atmosphere and land while changing between liquid, solid, and gas form. “We still have the same amount of water on the earth that we’ve always had. You borrow it and you give it back,” he says. His Atmospheric Water Generator simply borrows the H2O molecules from the air temporarily. “Water is here and it’s abundant and it’s a source that technology can remove and let us use it without any stress on our infrastructure.”
Mr. West’s road to the technology was almost quite accidental. After serving three years as an Army Ranger, he went to flight school and piloted helicopters. But a combat injury brought on his retirement from the military – but not from helping people. He traveled the world, until one day he found himself in Hawaii. A chance meeting with a neighbor changed his life.
The Idea
This neighbor had a small machine plugged into the wall that created water, which he says was “absolutely fantastic.” Sitting on his neighbor’s sofa and drinking glass after glass, Mr. West said he had a revelation. The process was simple, yet the potential was huge. Texas and Australia, where he had lived and traveled, were in the middle of droughts and related wildfires. Now knowing that the air all around us is filled with H2O molecules just waiting to be plucked, he had his epiphany: “If this little machine can do it on this scale, it’s just a mathematical formulation to get it to work on a larger scale. And so it’s a way to mitigate one of the largest crises that face us today.”
The machine that West developed was innovative. One of the challenges of scaling up atmospheric water generation technologies is the amount of energy they require. While there are many types of these units on the market today, all are very energy intensive.
West’s machine is different. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality requires power consumption no higher than 0.13 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per liter for approval. The unit developed by Moses used only 0.08 kWh in testing, and in Puerto Rico achieved 0.05 kWh. That’s an amazing improvement in energy efficiency, especially when you consider he had to scale up a small home unit to commercial size.
He got there by spending time watching and touching his machine and thinking about parasitic electrical load. “If I can put my hand someplace and I can feel some heat come off or if I can feel some cool air come off…temperature change is energy. I’ve gotten the equipment down to the place where it’s very, very low on energy consumption,” he says. “And that’s what you had to do to get it out to the market.”
The Beginning
Now that he had the technology, the next step was getting it to where it was most needed. To do this he founded the Water Resource Foundation™. It was formed to ensure that the groundbreaking work that has been completed to bring the advanced technology of Atmospheric Water Generation to the people that need it the most. Says West, "The one thing that everyone says is going to happen on this earth is that we are going to run out of water, and that’s just not true because we walk around in all the water we need every day."
“The one thing that everyone says is going to happen on this earth is that we are going to run out of water, and that’s just not true because we walk around in all the water we need every day.”
The Practical Application
But when Puerto Rico was devastated by Hurricane Maria, he founded the Water Rescue Foundation. The Foundation raised money and then took his machine to Puerto Rico, delivering fresh water to residents in cooperation with FEMA.
Until recently his technology was used mostly by the military and has produced more than a million gallons of water. But when Puerto Rico was devastated by Hurricane Maria, he founded the Water Rescue Foundation™. The Foundation raised money and then took his machine to Puerto Rico, delivering fresh water to residents in cooperation with FEMA. And because of the electrical problems on the island, he retrofitted his machine to run on solar panels.,
Says West, “One man, one machine supplied an entire island with all their drinking water needs to prove that it could be done. Someone had to see this happen and stop just talking about it. And then, to operate it on solar power, that’s when I could have just cried. To sit there in a chair and have a machine producing over a thousand gallons of water, just using stored photons, turn to electrons, turn to H2O molecules, even at night from battery backup. I just sat and looked at it for hours.”
His cause and mission.
As a former 2nd Lieutenant in the U.S. Army Rangers, West knows about missions and serving a cause. “I’m dedicated to saving lives around the world.” This cause is far from complete, but he’s working hard to get it done. Says West, “One thing a Ranger never does is start a mission and not finish it. Mission start. Mission completion. Anything less than that, completely unsatisfactory.”