18 months ago if someone asked me to name the three most
exciting water technologies then one of my three would, undoubtedly, have been
Dutch Rainmaker. This is a remarkably brilliant technology, with a name that
fits it perfectly: it was developed in The Netherlands and harvests water
directly from air.
Dutch Rainmaker is basically a wind turbine, which uses wind
energy to generate a thermal torque which precipitates the ‘rain’ inside a
specially designed reactor. Water yields vary depending on local conditions
(humidity and temperature mainly; a Scottish Island is very different to an
African desert!), but typically range between 5,000 and 50,000 litres of water a
day from each small (c4m high) turbine.
And they do this without using any fossil fuels, and without
requiring an extensive water network of pipes and pumps, or a power grid. This
is, truly and totally, a ‘distributed water’ solution. It is jolly exciting. It
could change the way communities get their water, in particular in the
developing world.
To be fair, technology that harvests water from air is not
particularly new; just look at the water vapour that is generated from an air
conditioning unit. What makes Dutch Rainmaker exciting is that they are doing
this at a scale never seen before. 18 months ago I was prepared to bet a kidneys
that there wasn’t a desal process that could compete at this scale. Actually, I
would have bet two kidneys (I just wouldn’t have said whose)
That was 18 months ago. 18 months is a long time in the water
sector. Anyone who works in the water sector knows how long, slow and arduously
painful it can be getting projects, especially innovative ones, to a point of
closure. Many brilliant companies simply don’t make it, they run out of funding
and have to fold.
12 months ago this was sadly looking like the likely fate for
Dutch Rainmaker. Every time I thought of the lost opportunity a little bit of me
died. However, today I was in Amsterdam (mainly to see one of the largest Data
Centres in Europe; we had a meeting with 9 people speaking 7 different
languages….but that’s a whole different Note for another day). I took the
opportunity to have breakfast with my friends at Dutch Rainmaker. Like a phoenix
rising from the ashes, Dutch Rainmaker is back, stronger and better.
It is now firmly back on my list of the top three most
exciting technologies, ever.
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