Recycling mini split water

[frostyllama]

Anyone have experience capturing water from a mini split and filtering it for use in their conversions?

I'm very interest in this and other forms of water use reduction. Like recirculating showers

There aren't many details on it, but the creator of this conversion claims to collect water from the air. Sounds like either a dehumidifier or mini split capture.
https://youtu.be/63VaJIXP874?t=1718

[joeblack5]

It has been done.
I use condense water out of the fridge to water my lead acid batteries. To condense water takes a lot of energy and in the desert the humidity is pretty low already..recycling water as much as you can is a smart thing to do.

Johan

[Bert06840]

Well, that’s how a dehumidifier works.

At 80 degrees F and 100% relative humidity one pound of holds .00223 lbs of water.

Say you remove 20% of that. 0.000223 lbs/cf. Say your bus is 5000 cf. Make it a pound of condensate.

Say that you condition your bus’ air volume five times per 24h. Gives you 5 lbs of condensate.

So sure. It’s possible. Is it worth it? Not for me. I’m all for recovery and efficiency, but this is a lot of trouble for little gain. Unless you are in, say Florida, where it is hot and humid a lot, it’s also a very unreliable source of water. Do you capture rain water? That may be lower hanging fruit in many parts of the country.

And then we are not even talking about how much power it takes to run a dehumidifier. Sure, you run A/C for comfort, cost being what it is, but to pull water from the air I would not do it.

[Danjo]

I’m recycling water at home. Catch the cold shower water. Use it to water the plants. Catch the shower water, use it to flush the toilet. I guess I’m at about 10 gallons a day.

Sorry don’t mean to skew your condensate question.

Joe, that’s a great idea since the water should be as distilled.

I wish I would have worked on recycling strategy on my bus build. There’s still always conservation.

[joeblack5]

Danjo, that is very impressive. We set our house up to recycle water but I have not completed the project. Used to catch the shower water to let it allow to cool down inside and reuse the heat..now we have evacuated tube solar and the energy is less of a concern...we do catch all the rainwater on our roofs and fill the 6000 gallon pond and another 1000 gallon tank . Currently only used for watering the garden...gravity feed u derground hose.. put pipes to use it as shower and wash water.. our tap water is very hard so it would be worth it from that perspective.

Johan

[Danjo]

Originally Posted by joeblack5

Danjo, that is very impressive. We set our house up to recycle water but I have not completed the project. Used to catch the shower water to let it allow to cool down inside and reuse the heat..now we have evacuated tube solar and the energy is less of a concern...we do catch all the rainwater on our roofs and fill the 6000 gallon pond and another 1000 gallon tank . Currently only used for watering the garden...gravity feed u derground hose.. put pipes to use it as shower and wash water.. our tap water is very hard so it would be worth it from that perspective.

Johan

I’d love to do that with a house. I’m in an apartment now and I’m doing it with buckets

[frostyllama]

Originally Posted by Bert06840

Well, that’s how a dehumidifier works.

At 80 degrees F and 100% relative humidity one pound of holds .00223 lbs of water.

Say you remove 20% of that. 0.000223 lbs/cf. Say your bus is 5000 cf. Make it a pound of condensate.

Say that you condition your bus’ air volume five times per 24h. Gives you 5 lbs of condensate.

So sure. It’s possible. Is it worth it? Not for me. I’m all for recovery and efficiency, but this is a lot of trouble for little gain. Unless you are in, say Florida, where it is hot and humid a lot, it’s also a very unreliable source of water. Do you capture rain water? That may be lower hanging fruit in many parts of the country.

And then we are not even talking about how much power it takes to run a dehumidifier. Sure, you run A/C for comfort, cost being what it is, but to pull water from the air I would not do it.

The builder of the video I posted claimed to pull 8 gallons of water a day in good conditions, presumably just from his cruise n comfort. He could have extra hardware, trying keep the IP locked down.

Ive got a mini split on order for my short bus conversion. 1.4kw solar on the roof 2x 3000w inverters and a 14kwh diy battery pack for storage. Also plan on some alternator charging. Totally electric utilities. System should support all day a/c in sunny weather.

Power shouldn't be a problem, and the mini split will be running most of the time anyway. Just need a filtration system for it, don't mind experimenting.

The water catchment is a great idea but I'm not sure how feasible it is with a 15 ft roof covered in solar panels. Nice thing about the condenser is you don't have to wait for rain, just need relative humidity.

[Bert06840]

Sure, why not give it a try?

People that are super protective of their IP usually do so because they don’t have anything that could stand the scrutiny. In order to be worth anything, it has to be non obvious. Otherwise you can’t get it patented nor can you keep it a trade secret. I’m not hitting on that guy specifically, this is just a general statement.

Whatever he does, it’s not going to violate the laws of thermodynamics.

As a reference... a commercial dehumidifier, a device specifically optimized for this task only, extracts between, say, 1 and maybe 2 liters for each kWh consumed. There’s an energy star label for it and all. Let’s say it’s 1 for easy calculation.

8 gallons, let’s call it 30 liters. It would take him 30kWh.

You have 1.2kW in solar. Let’s assume you’re not tilting it or anything and say it produces 6kWh a day on average. So if you would park next to a swamp and pump ALL of that electric power in the most efficient dehumidifier on the market with an EEV of 2, you got almost a dozen liters. There’s not going to be a lot of cooling to be had, but half a bucket IS within reach!

If you were to just collect condensate, a liter here, a liter there: why not? I don’t think the condensor produces water with more particulates/microorganisms/toxins in it than what you would pump from a creek, so the filtering is probably the same!

[Bert06840]

I just re-read your post, and saw you have 1400W of PV. That’s an almighty amount. Where do you fit that? How big is your bus?

Also 14kWh of battery. Mine is 15kWh (maybe 13kWh net) and I thought I was crazy.

[Rock-N-Ruth]

Originally Posted by frostyllama

Anyone have experience capturing water from a mini split and filtering it for use in their conversions?

I'm very interest in this and other forms of water use reduction. Like recirculating showers

There aren't many details on it, but the creator of this conversion claims to collect water from the air. Sounds like either a dehumidifier or mini split capture.
https://youtu.be/63VaJIXP874?t=1718

We didn't even route the drain from our mini split. We just stuck the drain in a half gallon jug. We got about an ounce and a half last year. Desert livin is a trip.

[frostyllama]

Originally Posted by Bert06840

I just re-read your post, and saw you have 1400W of PV. That’s an almighty amount. Where do you fit that? How big is your bus?

Also 14kWh of battery. Mine is 15kWh (maybe 13kWh net) and I thought I was crazy.

It was a tight fit. It's 4x350 panels. Tried to get a group buy in for 600 watt panels. Hopefully they'll be available domestically soon.

I appreciate the hard numbers, it sounds like it was an exaggeration

Originally Posted by Rock-N-Ruth

We didn't even route the drain from our mini split. We just stuck the drain in a half gallon jug. We got about an ounce and a half last year. Desert livin is a trip.

Good to know


Edit: bus is 21ft bumper to bumper roof is about 15ft

[Rock-N-Ruth]

Originally Posted by Bert06840

I just re-read your post, and saw you have 1400W of PV. That’s an almighty amount. Where do you fit that? How big is your bus?

Also 14kWh of battery. Mine is 15kWh (maybe 13kWh net) and I thought I was crazy.

Ruth and I have 12 327W panels on the roof for about 3900W charging 6 220AH Lifep04 batteries. We never plug in or start the generator. Not even when it has been cloudy for days.

[Bert06840]

Originally Posted by Rock-N-Ruth

Ruth and I have 12 327W panels on the roof for about 3900W charging 6 220AH Lifep04 batteries. We never plug in or start the generator. Not even when it has been cloudy for days.

Wow. That’s rather full

What’s your output? Peak/average?

The 400W system on our van CAN do 400W. I have a screen shot!

[Bert06840]

But as said elsewhere, a kWh a day during summer (in the Northeast, this was in Maine and Vermont) is a good number for this 400W system. So I’m counting on 2.5 times peak capacity, in my case 2.9kW (allegedly), so I’m assuming 7kWh or thereabouts as daily summer yield.

Also, the one day to the next variation can easily be 400%.

[Rock-N-Ruth]

Originally Posted by Bert06840

Wow. That’s rather full

What’s your output? Peak/average?

The 400W system on our van CAN do 400W. I have a screen shot!

Attachment 57497

We are capable of more than the rated 3.9k. Often after a long night of hard drain on our huge battery bank we will produce as much as 4.2k by noon even on cloudy days the batteries are topped and we will be making about 900w to cover the draw from the mini split.

[kidharris]

Originally Posted by Rock-N-Ruth

We didn't even route the drain from our mini split. We just stuck the drain in a half gallon jug. We got about an ounce and a half last year. Desert livin is a trip.

Your a/c just removed that water from the air and the air wants it back. LOL

[shaymcquaid]

I read that the water is non potable?

[o1marc]

Originally Posted by shaymcquaid

I read that the water is non potable?

It is potable and safe to drink. It's just condensation, though some say it picks up metals and dust and dirt. I think this is minimal and not a worry.

[kidharris]

Originally Posted by o1marc

It is potable and safe to drink. It's just condensation, though some say it picks up metals and dust and dirt. I think this is minimal and not a worry.

All of the air that the A/C processes blows over the coil that the water condenses onto (along with everything in the air). You could say that the water constantly tries to clean the coil. I am not going to worry about it because I am not going to drink it (except as a last resort in a life or death situation) I worked hvac when I was young and cleaned plenty of coils so I have some idea of what I am talking about - lint, dirt, mold, fungas......to some degree it depends on the local environment, air filter quality, and how religiously the air filter is cleaned


Maybe drink it with a Sawyer .02 water filter......

[cadillackid]

im sure A/C water has all kinds of stuff in it.. however metal and minewrals are apparently not.. my grandmother used dehumdifier water from her basement in her steam iron forever.. her steam iron was old when I was a kid.. she used it till the day she died.. it never clogged up and still worked perfect...