Clean drinking water is the difference between life and death. In places where wells are poisoned, rivers polluted or there is a poorly maintained water distribution system, people can walk hours to find water for drinking and/or cooking. Enter Source (formerly Zero Mass Water) and their solar-powered units that literally squeeze the humidity out of the air to create pure water (and mineralize it, so it tastes good).

In this video, Cody Friesen, CEO of Source and Associate Professor at Arizona State University, provides an overview of how their self-contained, solar-powered, conversion process works and cites numerous examples of how their product, SOURCE, is creating water in places where water infrastructure is poor or non-existent.

Source is sure to receive lots of press at CES2020, as indicated by this pre-conference interview, on the CES website, with board member and investor, Dr. Carmichael Roberts.

Interview highlights:

00:50 – It will be a boon to places where is no water infrastructure; places where people must carry water from wells, for example. He provides an example of where female students would have to walk 2-miles a day to fetch dirty water from a river. With 40 of their Hydropanels installed, their solution now serves the schoolgirls with clean water and promises to produce over 1 million liters of water over the life of the SOURCE Hydropanels.

01:51 – The water provided at the show was pulled from Sonoran Desert air that only had 5% humidity, proving its versatility He points out that this is great for disaster recovery when traditional water supplies are not available.
02:42 – Friesen indicates that it will operate in spotty cloud conditions and will operate in a range of humidity/sunlight conditions, as he says, “From Perth to Manila.”
03:19 – The target is to perfect water for drinking purposes. As the costs fall, Friesen anticipates that the market will grow to include other applications.
03:41 – The cost per liter is about 1/10 the cost of bottled water and he suggests that a Water as a Service model would be about 1/3 the cost of delivered bottled water and would eliminate the environmental and economic costs of water delivery trucks.
04:23 – Friesen explains that he installed two Hydropanels at his house and now has 80 PSI, 8.1 PH, water piped into his sink and refrigerator.