While surfing the web today I found this great new water cooler for offices without a water supply. It looks pretty much like a normal water cooler (see pic) - only it has no water supply. Yep, none of those ugly big containers lining the office hallway, and no back strain from lifting them into the top of the cooler. You just plug it in, and for the cost of a little electricity it makes clean drinking water by pulling moisture from the air. How great is that!Looking at the Poland Spring trucks lining the streets of my neighborhood, I know that U.S. offices are buying water by the truckload - literally.
Whether its in those big water cooler containers or in single serve plastic bottles, its a big waste of money. That money could be put to better uses - like drunken office parties! It's also a bad deal for the planet.
So, if you work in an office without a faucet and your boss has a Christmas list, get the Wataire Atmospheric Water Generator on it. It's about $1500 but it will save money in the long run and it'll provide you with some of the greenest water on earth. The only draw back - no hot delivery guys coming to the office each week - bummer.
Photo: tonic.com
Actually, this is one of the most HORRENDOUS wastes of energy I have ever heard of...
What this is doing is running an AC and collecting the water which collects on the evaporator, and then reheating the air again.
So you spend a huge amount of energy to do, umm, almost nothing!
Worse, most offices already have AC, so they are not that humid on the air.
It would make sense if it was part of an in-window air-conditioning unit, but even then, the AC unit would have to be very very efficient for this to make sense vs central air for cooling, and the water collected would just be a side effect.
That a "green" proposal would endorse something as grossly wasteful as this is shameful.
If you want good drinking water in the office, an RO filter is vastly cheaper to operate.
Some more numbers. Its 500W, and it claims to be 30L/day, so thats .4 KWh/l.
At .6 kG of CO2 per kwh, thats .25 kG of CO2 per liter of drinking water!
Far FAR FAR less CO2 would be emitted if the big bottle truck drops of twenty 20L bottles at a time, which is what happens at a typical business.
For reference, the claims I see for Fiji water, one of the most wasteful products on the planet, is its .25 kG of CO2 per bottle.