October 17th, 2008

By John DeFore

Songwriting legend Willie Nelson has a long history of earth-conscious activities, from Farm Aid and a personal line of biodiesel to his embrace of weeds many Americans would prefer to eradicate.

Now the Austin American-Statesman reports the singer has a new green project up his sleeve — or rather he’s pulling it out of thin air: He has put his name on a line of water coolers that make their own drinking water by dehumidifying the air.

The idea itself isn’t new. (Window-unit air conditioners produce water as a byproduct of cooling, as anyone who has walked under one knows.) If Luke Skywalker was the first water harvester to get mainstream exposure, recent years have seen real-world inventors launch plenty of companies selling air-to-water machines; scientists have asserted that “40 trillion gallons of constantly renewing and thus sustainable water sit virtually untouched in the atmosphere of the continental United States.”

One of the difficulties, it seems, is making the liquid potable. The devices Nelson has adopted, made by Wataire use filters to keep out airborne particles and pass water through a UV light to kill mold and other gunk; from there, the water is chilled or heated as in a conventional cooler.

Different sizes are available, including a home-sized unit that can produce about eight gallons a day from Central Texas’s humid air. (Performance varies depending on an area’s humidity.) That model costs around $1,700 upfront and, requiring about as much electricity as four or five conventional light bulbs, reportedly makes a gallon of water for less than 25 cents. That’s not low-impact enough, though, for one of Nelson’s associates, local shoe merchant RunTex — they’re thinking about rigging an industrial-sized unit up with solar power to provide free, sustainable water to joggers at Austin’s Lady Bird Lake.

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