We procure & distribute technologies that help people live better. 12 Photos and videos Are you sure you want to view these Tweets? Viewing Tweets won't unblock @GreenTechEnv.At the edge of the Atacama Desert, one of the driest places on earth, Lima, Peru, receives almost no rainfall. About 700,000 people have no access to clean water for drinking or bathing. Another 600,000 of the city's 7.5 million residents rely on cisterns for their water, which must be filled by pumps or by hand and cleaned regularly.But Lima's Pacific Coast location experiences humidity of more than 90 percent on summer days, from December to February. So engineers from Peru's University of Engineering and Technology (UTEC) have devised a way to turn that humid air into usable water. Last December, they erected a billboard in the Bujama District of Lima that by early March had produced 9450 liters (about 2500 gallons) of water.The idea came about because UTEC was facing a slump in enrollment as the new semester approached;

the engineering department wanted a way to attract more engineering students to the university. They went to Peruvian ad agency Mayo Publicidad, and the partnership of engineers and marketers crafted an advertisement that would provide a very visible demonstration of the university's engineering projects. The water-collecting billboard was born.Electricity from the city's power lines runs the five condensers inside the billboard. Like the condenser in your home air conditioner, the ones in the UTEC billboard are cooler than the air outside. When air contacts the cooled surfaces of the condensers, the air also cools, and the water vapor in the air condenses into liquid water. After reverse-osmosis purification, the water flows down into a 20-liter storage tank at the base of the billboard. The billboard generates about 96 liters of water each day, and a simple faucet gives local residents access to the water. UTEC has not yet announced whether the water will be available for free, but the billboard reportedly cost only about $1200 to install.

This is not the first attempt to pull clean water out of thin air. In 2011, French company Eole installed a wind turbine in Abu Dhabi, which the company claims generates more than 1400 liters of water each day. The WMS1000 is 24 meters (about 78 feet) tall, and its 13-meter rotor turns at up to 100 rpm to run a 30-kilowatt generator. This in turn powers a cooling compressor inside the turbine. An intake pulls air into the compressor, and moisture condenses out as the air cools. The water runs down into a purification and storage tank at the base of the turbine.The turbine needs winds of at least 15 mph to generate enough power for the compressor. In a desert climate with an average temperate of 95 degrees Fahrenheit and average relative humidity of about 30 percent, the WMS1000 generates about 350 liters of water a day. In humid coastal climates, production increases to about 1200 liters a day. Adding a solar power unit to the turbine could increase output by a few hundred liters more.Eole designed the turbine for remote communities of fewer than 5000 people, but when it launched the WMS1000 commercially, in 2012, the price tag for a single turbine was about $660,000, well beyond the budget of most small communities in developing countries.

Back in Lima, the UTEC engineering department and Mayo Publicidad may have found a way to offset the cost barrier: advertising.best air purifier odor eliminatorSince the billboard's installation, UTEC reports a 28 percent increase in enrollment. are ozone air purifiers goodResults like that may attract the attention of private companies looking for new ways to advertise. how spider plants clean airThe city of Lima and other urban areas, such as Cairo, Egypt, suffer the same lack of potable water as remote villages, and an advertising-funded solution that taps into an existing electrical infrastructure may work well there. UTEC has not yet announced plans to install more billboards in Lima or to make the technology commercially available elsewhere, but the project has started new discussions about how to provide access to clean water.

Worldwide, the World Health Organization estimates, about a billion people lack access to safe drinking water. Lack of clean water is a leading cause of cholera and other diseases that cause diarrhea. Perhaps UTEC's idea can make the situation a little better, one sign at a time.We strive to continuously exceed the expectations of our clients by providing top tier advice and service.  We offer our clients extensive experience, seasoned judgment and successful execution.By working solely with the companies that are changing our energy, industrial and resources landscape, we understand the key issues that face buyers, sellers, and investors.  Our dedicated focus enables us to develop deep industry knowledge and provide thoughtful and thorough advice. LifeStraw is a tube about 9.25 inches (23.5 centimeters) long and about an inch (2.5 centimeters) around [source: Wilhelm]. The outer shell of the unit is made of a durable plastic, with a string attached so users can wear it around their necks.

To use it, a person simply sticks the LifeStraw directly into the water source and drinks as he or she would from a straw. The first iteration of LifeStraw used iodine to kill bacteria, but the 2012 version contains no chemicals. Instead, the product incorporates mechanical filtration. When you suck on your LifeStraw, water is forced through hollow fibers, which contain pores less than 0.2 microns across -- thus, a microfiltration device. Any dirt, bacteria or parasites are trapped in the fibers, while the clean water passes through. When you're done drinking, you simply blow air out the straw to clear the filter. You can down a quart of water in eight minutes using the LifeStraw. How the Slingshot Water Purifier Works How the Atmospheric Sun Shade Could Work Can robot fish find pollution? How the Aquaduct Mobile Water Filtration Vehicle Works Vestergaard Frandsen says a personal LifeStraw unit should be able to purify about 1,000 liters (264 gallons) of water -- 2.7 liters (0.7 gallons) a day -- meaning that it will last a year before it needs to be replaced.

There are no replacement parts; users must get a new unit each year. LifeStraw Family is a larger unit that can purify enough water for several people at once. This higher-capacity product can handle a family of five for three years, or roughly 18,000 liters (4,755 gallons), according to the company. The product consists of a blue bucket with a prefilter insert, a long plastic tube and a filter cartridge with a tap attached to draw out the water. No electricity or battery power is required. Gravity guides water through a series of filters. The user pours water into the prefilter and bucket at the top of the unit. The water then moves down the tube and runs through the same type of hollow fiber technology that the personal LifeStraw uses, but these pores are actually 0.02 microns across, which makes it an ultrafiltration device. (It also means the family unit can filter out viruses, while the personal one can't.) The user can then pour the newly purified water from the tap. The person can clean the filter by closing the tap and pressing a red squeeze bulb to release the collected residue and can use a rag to wipe the prefilter bucket.