The Qanat: Squeezing Water from a Stone

www.academia.edu...

This is too cool, beginning about 3,000 years ago the ancient desert civilizations figured out how to cool the heated air and condense water from the humidity through tunnels that the water then seeped off the walls collected in a catchment tunnel and was transported long distances to towns or oases etc.

The qanat not only dried the air, but it also was often dug into an aquifer and acted as an artesian well.

I just think of all the possibilities of this system in today's environments, they mostly exist in the old Islamic Empire, but the humidifier form of the system can be built in the outback Australia for instance...en masse?

The Qanat supplied much of the water needed for the hanging gardens of Babylon and I first came across this technology reading the book "The Mystery of the Hanging Gardens" which is a great book talking about how the Gardens were built, watered, and etc.

Let me be the first to flag you young knight.

reply to post by FreeMason


The problem is more profound than you realize. Knowing something about this tech, if is all about surface area. Normally a desiccant is used. One must have more than just a temperature difference. There are MANY patents for both natural and mechanical devices to pull humidity from the air and to turn it into clean drinking water. So yes, it is "possible". But the problem arises when you attempt to "scale" it up, and you are talking about providing water for even a family, let alone a town.

Some of the "best" units require electricity to operate. If you have a lot of electrical power, it is possible.

Grace and peace.

Bruce

BruceSleuth
reply to post by FreeMason

 

The problem is more profound than you realize. Knowing something about this tech, if is all about surface area. Normally a desiccant is used. One must have more than just a temperature difference. There are MANY patents for both natural and mechanical devices to pull humidity from the air and to turn it into clean drinking water. So yes, it is "possible". But the problem arises when you attempt to "scale" it up, and you are talking about providing water for even a family, let alone a town.

Some of the "best" units require electricity to operate. If you have a lot of electrical power, it is possible.

Grace and peace.

Bruce

edit on 11-10-2013 by BruceSleuth because: (no reason given)

Well the Qanat won't be as efficient as desalination from nuclear power :p but I thought the tech a cool example of innovation and the fact it supplied so much to ancient civilizations is also pretty cool.

Count your water rings and pray to shai halud

crawley
Count your water rings and pray to shai halud

Haha yes, I was thinking how perhaps condensation in the tunnels of the sandworm would increase the moisture enough to provide the worms with their needed water (since free flowing water is deadly to them).

Ahh.....I wish I were a Planetary engineer!

Free Mason

You might want to look at

Persian Yakhchal ice houses

reply to post by FreeMason


Very nice to see old knowledge used for the very things that we pay tor today.
Extremely interesting article and I will have to look up more about it when I can.

By the way, how in the hell did you get 737,000+ stars?
Good grief that's gotta be a glitch.

Hanslune
Free Mason

You might want to look at

Persian Yakhchal ice houses

Already have, I think they are ingenious.
And my stars, not a glitch, I'm Batman!