Self filling water bottles

[MtDoraDave]

Before reading the explanations here, I figured the batteries needed for x amount of time would be just as, if not more prohibitive than carrying water. Solar powered stuff on the AT that is mostly shaded? No thanks.
Filters or chemicals are pretty light weight. Sharper Image types of gadgetry aren't something I would choose to carry on a hike.

[Leo L.]

Anybody knows the woodburning stove named Biolite?
First off (and that's the big difference to this Self Filling Nonsense), it works, so much I can confirm.
But it suffers the same dilemma as described above: While it pretends to have surplus energy you easily could use it to charge your phone while cooking, this does not work. It has only little energy output and to give your (smart-)phone a full charge you would need to keep it burning for very many hours (feeding in wood every 10 minutes and emptying out ashes every hour or so).
And its heavy. The Peltier element contains some heavy cooper pieces and some more.
So its way much easier to carry any lightweight stove you like, and carry a powerbank to keep your phone charged.

This waterbottle thing suffers from both, first it would not work in most circumstances, and second, if engineered in a way that it might work its way too heavy.

I'm sorry for this being Austrian people (names indicate maybe Hungarian or Polish origin though). We usually are no cheaters but pretty straight caracters.

[Connie]

I was thinking only of a filler cap for a water bottle, perhaps a fine screen (not too fine) and a nice attachment for the hiking stick fully extended to reach down an embankment to the water or reach a little further out from the lakeside to dunk under the surfact of the water.

Not precisely a self-filling water bottle..

[atraildreamer]

A self-filling wallet would be a great piece of equipment for a thru-hike!

[Sarcasm the elf]

Jam the snickers into yourself and metabolize them into water

I'd just end up metabolizing them into methane.

[CamelMan]

names indicate maybe... Polish origin though).

Hey! We would have gotten the thing to work. But it would be a total patchwork kludge and you'd end up buying the real thing from somebody else for ten times the money.

[CamelMan]

A self-filling wallet would be a great piece of equipment for a thru-hike!

Mine works just fine. Only fills with receipts, though.

[Leo L.]

And now the Great Invention of a self-filling water bottle goes down the Orkus.
News report, that the guy has changed the design siginficantly, so that it can be plugged into any energy supply, and if investors don't trust the story any longer there could be a refund.
The website is no longer available.

[FreeGoldRush]

This can go into the pack next to one of those miniature water turbines for charging a phone, which is just behind the compartment where you keep the multi-tool, knife set, hatchet, foldable saw, and your hardback copy of War and Peace.

[Dogwood]

Some of yall are missing the pt that no surface water(including snow) may exist in some areas(get your narrow focus off just the AT for a moment!) The wt of the tech might be acceptable to get water from the atmosphere under some conditions?

[Leo L.]

A German survival expert (Ruediger Nehberg) once ran in the hardest desert of the world (Danakil) a series of tests to find out how it would be possible to get water in the desert where there is none.
First he found, that most of the common recommendations like, dig a hole and cover it with plastic, are pure nonsense. You would end up dehydrated faster than you can gather a few drops.
Last he found, that something like Silica Gel could work, given you had a means to heat the H2O out of the Gel. He tried a foldable solar mirror (which he used for cooking anyway).
But thats not for hiking.

[Feral Bill]

Some of yall are missing the pt that no surface water(including snow) may exist in some areas(get your narrow focus off just the AT for a moment!) The wt of the tech might be acceptable to get water from the atmosphere under some conditions?

In the desert, in the summer, it just won't work. Excepting MAYBE places with high humidity but little or no precipitation. Those would not be in North America.

[FreeGoldRush]

Some of yall are missing the pt that no surface water(including snow) may exist in some areas(get your narrow focus off just the AT for a moment!) The wt of the tech might be acceptable to get water from the atmosphere under some conditions?

Areas with no surface water or snow are also the areas with a relative humidity less than 30%. That is why hikers will likely never depend on getting water from the air. But getting water from air might be useful in coastal areas or foggy mountain tops where the energy and infrastructure required to transport small amounts of water uphill are not available.

[Dogwood]

Areas with no surface water or snow are also the areas with a relative humidity less than 30%. That is why hikers will likely never depend on getting water from the air. But getting water from air might be useful in coastal areas or foggy mountain tops where the energy and infrastructure required to transport small amounts of water uphill are not available.

Exactly what I was thinking after recently watching a nature documentary of very arid desert reptiles and insects absorbing tiny condensed droplets that had formed from coastal fog on themselives by heading up to dune ridges in early morn. Kinda neat. The cretures that ate these smaller lizards and insects knew these habits so would wait to ambush them on the way back down from the Ridge knowing they were "juicier" a5 that time.

[LIhikers]

Why not just carry water chestnuts?
Maybe you could even dehydrate them to make them lighter.

[Dogwood]

R they next to the organic dehydrated water tablets?

[RangerZ]

Investigating this a bit further just for fun:

Lets assume the thermoelectric cooler operates at 40F, and air is 86F with 75% relative humidity.
At 40F the air holds 5 g water /kg air
At 86 it holds 27.7 g/kg. So at 75% RH, it holds 20.7. So its possible to condense 15.7 g water out of a kg of air. Or 7.8 g/lb air since I like lbs better.

so to make 1 Liter water = 1000 g takes 1000/7.8 = cooling of 128 lbs air @ 75% RH from 86 f to 40 F, with associated condensation of water

The heat removed from the air is about 128*0.25 btu/lb-F*45F=1440 btu
the latent heat removed from the water is 2200 btu roughly
The sensible heat of the water is on average, only about 50 btu

total heat load would be 3690 btu

thermoelectric would only be about 50% efficient so electrical duty would be 7380 btu to do this in one hr this would be 2163 watts of power required.

Heres the kicker...solar panels produce about 10 watts per sq ft. So lets say this thingy has 2 ft2 solar panel. It makes 20 watts

Your looking at 100 hrs to make a liter of water under optimal conditions

and of course, we didnt include the power required for the fan.

Thats 100 hrs of sunlight for solar power. 8 days ish.

Much of the time, as I described above , it would do nothing at all in many areas of low humidity.

This stuff didn't make sense in college and even less now. Would it help to "seed" the water bottle with a liter or so?

[Leo L.]

And now the company has gone south...

[Deadeye]

They used still-suits on Arrakis, but it seems we've forgotten our Dune history.

[Feral Bill]

This stuff didn't make sense in college and even less now. Would it help to "seed" the water bottle with a liter or so?

Afraid not. Another example of the fact that phsyics always wins.