Regional droughts in the Caribbean are common. Water managers seeking solutions to water scarcity are often unfamiliar with the option of using water-from-air technology. Maps of the specific humidity composite mean for Junes and Decembers during the ten-year period 2004–2013 quantify the water-from-air resource demonstrating it is suitable for operation of water-from-air systems in Caribbean countries. Quantitative investigations by the author found droughts and long-term climate change do not appear to affect the magnitude of the Caribbean region’s water-from-air resource. Case studies include one for a proposed water-from-air commercial greenhouse on Grand Turk. Another case is about the experience of commissioning a 2500 L/d water-from-air machine in Belize City. Lessons learned from the case studies are outlined.
I have the privilege of being accepted as one of the presenters during the Technical Sessions at the 23rd Annual Caribbean Water and Wastewater Association (CWWA) Conference and Exhibition scheduled for October 6-10, 2014 at Atlantis Resorts on Paradise Island, Bahamas. Here is the Abstract of my paper:
Regional droughts in the Caribbean are common. Water managers seeking solutions to water scarcity are often unfamiliar with the option of using water-from-air technology. Maps of the specific humidity composite mean for Junes and Decembers during the ten-year period 2004–2013 quantify the water-from-air resource demonstrating it is suitable for operation of water-from-air systems in Caribbean countries. Quantitative investigations by the author found droughts and long-term climate change do not appear to affect the magnitude of the Caribbean region’s water-from-air resource. Case studies include one for a proposed water-from-air commercial greenhouse on Grand Turk. Another case is about the experience of commissioning a 2500 L/d water-from-air machine in Belize City. Lessons learned from the case studies are outlined.
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![]() I discovered that Turks and Caicos Weekly News Online featured an article (August 12, 2011) about our project participant Nicholas Turner. The opening paragraphs from the article. TCI’S long neglected agricultural sector is in for a major boost thanks to a forthcoming national training centre to educate a new generation of farmers. North Caicos’ listless government farm is to be transformed into a venue to research the best way to grow crops – with the emphasis on organic produce. Aspiring farmers will be given plots of land on the vast 160-acre site for a peppercorn rent. They will then receive training from farm staff on the best techniques on everything from irrigation to fertiliser. It’s just part of plans unveiled by new agriculture director Nicholas Turner who hopes the Islands will eventually yield enough fruit, veg, dairy products and meat, to feed the entire nation. Updates: March 25, 2013--http://tcweeklynews.com/agriculture-coop-in-planning-stages-p3690-127.htm July 7, 2013--http://tcweeklynews.com/agriculture-department-still-without-director-p4111-1.htm Jan 27, 2014--http://tcweeklynews.com/agriculture-projects-for-provo-and-middle-caicos-being-reviewed-p4725-1.htm ![]() Apparently, I should not be so frustrated that the WaterProducer-Greenhouse™ project has not yet built its first installation! New technologies have often taken about two decades to become mainstream. Steven Johnson gave several examples in his interesting book (published 2010) titled, Where good ideas come from: the natural history of innovation. It takes typically about ten years to construct the "platform" and another ten years for widespread adoption (the 10/10 rule). I am experiencing this (agonizingly) with the WaterProducer-Greenhouse™ Project. The two year viability study, completed in 2003 resulted in a unique knowledge base (the reports to CIDA) that could be marketed to interested people. Lots of mild interest. Many hours are spent on personal networking and development of this information-rich website. Now, more than ten self-funded years later, I am hopeful that there exist some early adopters with the imagination and guts to exploit this innovative technically and commercially viable platform (along with our team's expertise) for improving water and food security for the people living on and visiting tropical small islands. Water-scarcity remains one of the global "key societal challenges" reminds an editorial in the January 2, 2014 issue of Nature. In the same issue, Colin Macilwain listed examples of mounting societal problems in this order: water, food, health, energy, and climate change. The WaterProducer-Greenhouse™ addresses the first two problems. ![]() Our online store is now selling complete sets of the printed and bound reports our Grand Turk water-from-air greenhouse project produced for CIDA. These peer-reviewed documents are an invaluable knowledge base about a practical method of improving water security and food security for the people living on and visiting small tropical islands. Water security appears to be the subject of many search engine queries in North America. Although other countries do not appear on the regional interest list this does not indicate necessarily an absence of queries but rather a low volume of queries. Qualitatively, it seems that interest in water security has been fairly stable during the last year.
Food security was clearly of concern during the previous 12 months in Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, India, and Australia as well as in North America and the UK. There appears to be a recent upsurge of interest in food security. In the context of these regions, the WaterProducer-Greenhouse™ may be investigated as a possible water-plus-food-security solution for small tropical islands, with access to deep cold ocean water, associated with especially India (Lakshadweep, Andaman Islands, Nicobar Islands), Australia (Coral Sea Islands), and USA (SE Florida, Florida Keys). The Turks and Caicos Islands Government has contracted with a joint venture of Matrix Enviro, Ltd. and Aqua-Chem, Inc. to build a new 300,000 US gallons per day reverse osmosis plant on Grand Turk. More information is available at:
Will this development affect the viability of the Grand Turk Water-Producer-Greenhouse™ Project? Probably not, for the following reasons:
After 10 years of maintaining the infrastructure for the WaterProducer-Greenhouse™ project but with still no prospect of the first installation being funded and built, it is all too easy to become discouraged. Therefore, I was keen to see what the recently released Global Trends 2030, published by the National Intelligence Council (USA), would say that could be relevant to the project. I found this discussion on pages 93–94 of the report:
Water management will be critical to achieving global food security because agriculture today requires irrigation for 40 percent of its production and consumes approximately 70 percent of global freshwater supplies. Currently, agricultural irrigation wastes about 60 percent of the water withdrawn from freshwater sources. Efficient water management will be required to sustain a necessary increase in agricultural productivity. Even though desalination technologies might be economically feasible for household and industrial water, such technologies are unlikely to produce irrigation water from saline waters at a low enough cost to be feasible for agricultural use. As water scarcity increases, adopting technologies that increase water-use efficiency will be the only option farmers will have for confronting global water scarcity. The array of such technologies includes precision agriculture and GM drought-tolerant and salt-tolerant crops as well as micro-irrigation systems and hydroponic greenhouse technologies. Efficient direct use of a 'new' source of water, the water vapour in the air, combined with commercial-scale hydroponic horticulture does appear to be a worthwhile technological option for tropical small islands. Roland Wahlgren, BSc MA, is a Physical Geographer and owner/President of Canadian Dew Technologies Inc. (CDTI, www.candew.ca). He has researched water-from-air technologies since 1984. Peer-reviewed publications in the water-from-air field include Atmospheric Water Vapour Processing, Waterlines, Practical Action Publishing (1993); Atmospheric Water Vapour Processor Designs for Potable Water Production: A Review, Water Research, Elsevier Science Ltd. (2001); and Water-Producing Greenhouses for Small Tropical Islands: Ahead of Their Time or a Timely Solution?, Acta Hort. 797, ISHS 2008, (2008). CDTI, founded in 2003, has performed research and development work for client companies interested in commercializing water-from-air technologies. The R & D work included building prototypes of 20 L per day and 2500 L per day machines. The 2500 L per day machines were commercialized. CDTI commissioned, on behalf of its client, two 2500 L per day machines in Belize City in 2006. As Principal of Atmoswater Research (www.atmoswater.com; founded 1997), Roland Wahlgren was the scientific/technical consultant to the CIDA-supported Grand Turk Water-producing Greenhouse Viability Study from 2001 to 2003. He performed the role of project manager for the CIDA project. He has persisted in fund-raising efforts and maintained the project website for several years. He completed recently a major revision of the website.
Development budget
Establishing the proposed business requires USD 5.6 million. Candidate crops include tomatoes, sweet peppers, cucumbers, eggplants, beans, herbs, lettuces, and strawberries. Cut flowers such as chrysanthemums and Asiatic lilies may be grown. The greenhouse can fill demand for a population of 3500 for the listed produce. Revenue would be derived from sales of vegetables/fruit (25%) and bottled /piped water (75%). More details are in the Executive Summary. Test borehole budget A test-borehole budget ($480,000), includes selected start-up requirements, selected construction administration and selected site improvements. These selected line items are oriented around the test borehole activity. The results from drilling the test borehole comprise a “go / no-go” decision point. The decision to bring the project to scale will be made if the test borehole results show that natural coolant in the form of saline groundwater (15 °C to 17 °C) is available with a high enough flow rate to operate the dehumidification process in the water-producing greenhouse. Disclaimer: Financial values are illustrative only, and are subject to change with material and labour costs, land costs, and financing arrangements. Long-term viability of the water-producing greenhouse system results from the project strategy of addressing the basic human needs for food and water. Both food and water are scarce on numerous tropical small islands around the globe. Population and tourism growth have overwhelmed the natural carrying capacity of most populated small islands. Small island businesses and governments are seeking technological means to increase island carrying capacity. Funding will allow drilling a 600 m deep test borehole with the intent of showing that this system is an acceptable commercial risk as a full-scale project on Grand Turk and similar tropical small islands composed of carbonate rock. The project’s business model (shown below) of a successful Grand Turk commercial water-producing greenhouse operation combined with drinking-water bottling can be franchised to entrepreneurs in many other tropical small island locations (see list of viable island locations in CDTI’s Technical Bulletin No. 3).
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Water + Food™ Blog
AuthorRoland Wahlgren is a Physical Geographer. He was scientific and technical consultant to the WaterProducer-Greenhouse™ Project while it was "live" as a CIDA-supported Viability Study during 2001-2003. Archives
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