WarkaWater Kickstarter Campaign
Published on by Water Network Research, Official research team of The Water Network in Business
In an Attempt to Help Bring Water to Those Living in Northeastern Ethiopia, Engineers at WarkaWater Have Developed a New Type of Tower that Can Harvest H2O from Rain, Fog and Dew
Known asWarkaWatertowers, the 30-foot-tall, 13-foot-wide structure was developed by artist, architect and industrial designer Arturo Vittori and his colleaguesArchitecture and Vision (AV)as an environmentally-friendly and financially-sustainable solution to potable water.
Recent research indicates that just over one-third of Ethiopia's population has access to a usable water supply, the company explains. That suggests that there are nearly 60 million people living in that country lack access to a safe water supply for drinking, showers or toilet-related uses.
As Wired pointed out in a Friday article, WarkaWater is hardly the first contraption to try and bring potable water to areas lacking it, and like many of them, it functions by gathering moisture from the air and funneling it into a hygienic holding tank where it is collected for use.
Its name stems from the 75-foot-tall Warka tree, but the tower itself is constructed from latticed bamboo lined with orange polyester mesh, the website said. AV unveiled a full-sized prototype model of it last year, and haslaunched a Kickstarter campaignto help fund work on an improved version scheduled to be field-tested in Ethiopia later this year.
"The new prototype has some key upgrades," Wired said. "The exterior is of bamboo rather than juncus, the top of the tower has reflective pieces to deter birds, and the structure is larger (13 feet wide, up from 7). This doubled the surface area of its water-resistant polyester mesh netting - the orange material you see—so more water is collected as fog permeates the fine mesh."
The WarkaWater will cost approximately $1,000 to produce, requires no electricity to use, and takes less than an hour to assemble, Vittori told the website. It is comprised of five modules than can be easily packed-up and moved as necessary, and the ultimate goal for the device is for it to become a efficient way to produce water on a 24/7 basis.
Source: Red Orbit
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