Turning Air into Water: Aquaria’s Atmospheric Generators Explained

In this episode of the Climate Confident Podcast, I’m joined by Brian Sheng, CEO and co-founder of Aquaria, to explore a potential solution to water scarcity. Brian shares how Aquaria is tackling one of the most pressing challenges of our time by harvesting water from the air. We delve into the technology behind atmospheric water generators, which create clean water through condensation, akin to the droplets on a cold beer glass on a hot day.

We discuss the practical applications of these generators, from individual homes to entire communities, and the potential for scaling up to cities. Brian highlights their initial projects in Texas and Hawaii, where homes are now fully powered by solar energy and generate water from the atmosphere. We also touch on the energy efficiency of these units and their integration with solar power to ensure a sustainable supply.

A significant takeaway is the importance of water security and how Aquaria's technology can offer a fast, cost-effective alternative to traditional infrastructure. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in innovative solutions to climate change and water sustainability.

Tune in to learn more about how Aquaria is making water scarcity a thing of the past.

Transcript

Brian Sheng: 0:03

But we know there's lots of water in the air, rain, fog, clouds, all of that is water. Even in areas with less humidity, there's still lots of water in there, and we might not see it. And that's what our technology does, is making that into clean water for use in drinking, cooking, living, and other use cases. Exactly. Out of thin air.

Tom Raftery: 0:24

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. This is the Climate Confident podcast, the number one podcast showcasing best practices in climate emission reductions and removals. And I'm your host, Tom Raftery. Don't forget to click follow on this podcast in your podcast app of choice to be sure you don't miss any episodes. Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode 176 of the climate confident podcast. My name is Tom Raftery. And before we kick off today's show, I want to take a moment to express my gratitude to all of this podcast. Amazing supporters. Your support has been instrumental in keeping the podcast going, and I'm really grateful for each and every one of you. If you're not already a supporter, I'd like to encourage you to consider joining our community of like-minded individuals who are passionate about climate. Supporting the podcast is easy and affordable with options starting as low as just three Euros or dollars. That's less than the cost of a cup of coffee and your support will make a huge difference in keeping the show going strong. To become a supporter you simply click on the support link in the show notes of this or any episode, our visit tiny url.com/climate pod. In today's episode, I'm talking to Brian from Aquaria and in upcoming episodes, I'll be talking to Interfaith to HED, and to ClimateWorks. So stay tuned for those episodes. But as I mentioned, In today's episode, I'm talking to Brian from Aquaria. So Brian. Welcome to the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Brian Sheng: 1:57

yeah, Tom, I'd love to. You know, I'm coming, coming off a really great Memorial Day weekend, and so really excited to be here on this podcast. I am the CEO and co founder of Aquaria, and I am building a company where we are unlocking a new and secure source of water supply for cities by harvesting thin air. And so our mission is to address I think one of the largest problems we face today amidst climate change, which is access to clean water. So I'd love to talk more about this today and, you know, share some information with our audience.

Tom Raftery: 2:35

Fantastic. When you say harvesting water from thin air, you mean just literally getting water out of the air and giving it to people to drink.

Brian Sheng: 2:49

Yeah, literally, literally out of thin air. I mean, I'm here in San Francisco, Tom. So I think many people that are around the Bay Area would see fog all over the place, but we know there's lots of water in the air, rain, fog, clouds, all of that is water. Even in areas with less humidity, there's still lots of water in there, and we might not see it. And that's what our technology does, is making that into clean water for use in drinking, cooking, living, and other use cases. Exactly. Out of thin air.

Tom Raftery: 3:21

And how does it work?

Brian Sheng: 3:25

So, let's see, I can explain it a couple of ways, but actually, the fundamental principles is quite simple and we all know it. So Tom, I'm sure you've had the experience in the summer, you take a a glass of cold drink out of the fridge and then water droplets form on the side of the bottle, right? So actually that's a, that's a form of it. It's it's condensation. So the question is, how do we create condensation? How do we extract water out of the air in large volume and using little energy. So that's actually what our technology does is we have created both active and passive cooling methods where we use special materials. We've created heat exchange and recovery systems and airflow design such that we're maximizing heat exchange, and then we're able to extract large volumes of water. Again, that's our focus is enough to power entire homes, communities, in the future cities, with water from the sky.

Tom Raftery: 4:26

Okay. what's the kind of genesis story for this, Brian? Because it's not something that, you know, people tend to think about on a regular basis. I mean, most of us go to our taps, turn them on and out comes water.

Brian Sheng: 4:42

So when was the last time you thought about water?

Tom Raftery: 4:44

When I went to the kitchen just before and filled up this container here for the podcast.

Brian Sheng: 4:50

Right. So, so that's actually part of the problem. You know, I think of course, everyone drinks water every single day, but people aren't really thinking about water. That's actually part of the genesis behind this company. I used to be a venture capitalist, and then I was thinking about a you know, really contributing my time and spending my time as a founder of a climate company versus just investing in companies. And so I was thinking through, like, okay, well, I want to dedicate myself to climate. I've been working on climate for quite a while, and I even did my, you know, I guess, college thesis on a climate related topic in energy and water. But as I'm sure there are lots of guests that have come on the Climate Confident podcast, there's lots of great entrepreneurs working on energy issues. But why are there not more people focusing on water? That's a huge, huge challenge. And that's what I want to do for Aquaria. That's what I want to do with Aquaria, is we want to provide a new way to bring water, clean source of water. And that's how I got started.

Tom Raftery: 5:56

Okay. And where did the technology come from?

Brian Sheng: 6:02

We created it. We created everything in house. We built it over the past four years and, you know, are we are, we have a great technology team. I'm technical myself, but we also have a fantastic CTO leading our team of researchers. So we've, we spent a lot of time and effort building the technology over the past four years.

Tom Raftery: 6:21

Great. And how does it work? I mean, I know you said it's like condensation on my beer glass as I'm sitting out on a sunny day. Talk to me more about it from kind of a practical perspective. If I am a homeowner in somewhere where there might be water insecurity, what's next?

Brian Sheng: 6:44

Sure. More practically speaking, you know, our product is kind of like, maybe I'll use Tesla power packs as an example. They could be bigger, they could be smaller, they could be indoor, it could be outdoors. It just kind of depends on where you live and you know, what type of home you have. Like, Tom, do you, do you have a balcony or do you have a garage? Like, I don't know how, or you have an apartment. Like, how, how does that work?

Tom Raftery: 7:06

I have a house. So it's a detached house with front garden, back garden, side garden, etc.

Brian Sheng: 7:14

Okay. Perfect. So essentially, if someone had a home and you know, a backyard, let's say r front yard, we would be able to put a small box in front of, in front or behind the house, and then connect that box to your pipes, to your main water pipes. That way, when you're inside the home, when you turn on your tap water, or when you're taking a shower, you actually can't tell a difference that the water is coming from the sky. We put a storage tank behind your home, a small one or a large one, depending on that's up to you to decide how much water you want to store. And, and that's how, how, how we're able to provide that water seamlessly. We have a separate version that's smaller indoors, and that one just functions like a well designed water cooler, and it looks like an office water cooler, but it can produce up to 24 gallons or, you know, 100 liters of water a day just from the air. So it's dependent on your needs.

Tom Raftery: 8:08

So you have something that looks like a water cooter, operates indoors and can produce up to 100 liters of water a day.

Brian Sheng: 8:18

Yes, that's right.

Tom Raftery: 8:20

Whoa, because water coolers are what? What's in a water cooler? It's probably around 25 liters, maybe.

Brian Sheng: 8:28

Likely, likely the case, and so we have a hundred, and so probably enough for 20 to 30 people a day, maybe more depending on where you're at, schools, office building, I guess, or for your home if you're making soup.

Tom Raftery: 8:46

And talk to me about the energy footprint of it then, because I know you said it needed to be energy efficient, but we know that heating and cooling, you know, just looking at my fridge freezer in the kitchen there, it does have a significant energy footprint. What does the, this, this water. Is it a water? What do we call it? It's not a water purifier. It's not really water generator. What, what are we

Brian Sheng: 9:09

we call it a, yeah, we call it an atmospheric water generator, or air water generator.

Tom Raftery: 9:16

Okay. So what's like the energy footprint of one of these air water generators?

Brian Sheng: 9:22

Yeah, so let's take the indoor unit I just mentioned, for example. I assume that if you go to your local supermarket or you know, buy your water, maybe a a gallon, a couple of liters of water, 25 cents, 50 cents, I think, something like that. But we think about our costs in terms of energy. So that unit is a 1.2 kilowatt appliance. And so each liter of water we're creating is likely around anywhere from two to five pennies of water in energy costs. And the appliance itself is 1.2 kilowatts. So you can, you can, you know, run the, run the system on solar off grid or your power on your power grid. And, and it has a the, the, the footprint of, of, of electric appliance at home.

Tom Raftery: 10:13

Okay. And who is the target market for this? Because look, like I said, when I got the water for the podcast, I went out to the tap in the kitchen and turned it on and out came perfectly good water.

Brian Sheng: 10:28

Yeah, that's a great point. You know, the way we think about Aquaria is we're building a secure way to get water that is faster and more affordable. And the reason for that is if we think about water today, like Tom, that's fantastic. You know, you have great water flowing out of your tap. I live in San Francisco, so we don't really have a tap water issue here either. But very close outside of San Francisco, there's lots of water disruption and contamination, you know, along the coastlines of California and, you know, and even just north of San Francisco, and it's really. The case for many parts of the southern United States, and of course, many parts of the world. And in order to fix that, you have to build these large, expensive infrastructure. Whereas for us, you can place our units and start making water immediately. So that's really the value we offer. You know, you mentioned water security before is that we give you a way to control your water supply and make it. immediately without having to spend a large sum of money and wait for those other methods to kind of come online.

Tom Raftery: 11:36

Okay. And when you say immediately, how fast does it operate, how long does it take to get a, the first liter out or the, the 100th liter out or, I know it probably depends on unit size as well, but does it have like a five or 10 minute warmup period before you get any out or how, you know, how immediate is immediate?

Brian Sheng: 11:55

Oh yeah, it's let's give some ranges. So let's say for that indoor unit, that indoor unit is actually so simple. You just plug it into the wall, it starts right away. So let's say on a not super humid day, and let's say it makes 50, 70, not 100 liters, right? So if you divide that up, down to 24 hours in a day, you're making two, three litres in the first couple of first hour, right? First hour. So you literally get water immediately and Let's you take an outdoor unit. That's a little larger Well, it would be the same thing the moment that you're of course It might it will take a little bit longer to you know, install that machine in your backyard but again, once that thing is installed, which would only take a couple of days way way you know faster than even digging a well. Again, 30 to 50 liters per hour probably. This is a larger machine.

Tom Raftery: 12:50

And the water coming out of it, I know if it's water that is after having been condensed, it's quite pure, but are you running it through filters to take out any contaminants or is it just straight from the condensate?

Brian Sheng: 13:08

Oh, we, we definitely have to purify it. Then the air and also in the water. Once you've condensed it you created it, there's potential contaminants in there. So we run in our In our products, we actually have multi stages of both air filtration, like HEPA filters, as well as water purification systems, you know, ultrafiltration or activated charcoal, etc. So then we're running it through multiple stages of air and water purification. And then even once the water is created and it's sitting in the tank, we still run that through a UV, UV disinfection process over time so that it continues to stay clean. Now I think the last step will probably we will not probably we we skip if you're using the water to flush your toilet, you don't need that quality of water. But for drinking, we do that.

Tom Raftery: 13:59

Okay. Okay. And who, who's the target market? I mean, you've mentioned office buildings, you've mentioned homes, you've mentioned scaling up to cities at some point, but right now, who are you targeting it at?

Brian Sheng: 14:13

Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. Tom you know what I mentioned before are essentially our vision for Aquaria is building atmospheric water at the scale in the future for entire cities. And that's how we think about our customers is that essentially we are a water solution for buildings starting with people, humans. We as humans need water the most. We as humans have the highest value on water for our lives. And so we want to start with protecting the security and the quality of human access to water first. So what that means is we're starting with homes. We're starting with communities. Actually at the end of last year, we built you know, some of the first homes in the world whose water supply comes from air. This is in Texas, this is in Hawaii in America, and now their water supply is solar powered, they have batteries and homeowners get water from the air. And then this year, we're actually, we signed, we just signed a contract where we're now building out communities of a thousand homes in Hawaii, and we're starting to scale up from there. And that's likely where we're going for the next, you know, a couple of years is really focused on building more and larger communities in areas that's facing water stress. And then giving these communities an option where we just attach our units, our technology on the homes and then have another source of water.

Tom Raftery: 15:35

Okay, so in that community of a thousand in Hawaii, is that a thousand individual units or is it maybe 200 units split across five homes or is it one unit split across a thousand homes or where does it fall in that spectrum?

Brian Sheng: 15:55

Yeah, you know, our initial plan is actually one unit per home. For this particular community we're building in Hawaii we're actually thinking about having each home as an example of like an individual unit where the solar power and the batteries and the water is self contained. But recently, actually, there's a, you know, we came across that conversation around the idea of a microgrid, but for water, whereby we don't necessarily need individual. Maybe we have a cluster of 5 to 10 homes, and then the water tank connects to all of them, and it simply distributes the water, you know, as needed, because not every home always have the same number of people there, and the usage may vary. So, you know, we're playing with those ideas. I'm really excited about some of those ideas.

Tom Raftery: 16:45

Okay. And have you been in touch with the people in Flint, Michigan?

Brian Sheng: 16:52

Flint, Michigan. Yes, that comes up a lot. You know, yes, we, we, we are speaking with some developers over there to, you know, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's a very frequently mentioned place and, and, and it's actually not just Flint though, Tom, you know, Flint comes up top of mind, but there's lots of other places.

Tom Raftery: 17:11

Okay. Where, so in, in kind of order of priorities, what are, what are you prioritizing in terms of homes, communities, cities, in terms of, you know, your, your development?

Brian Sheng: 17:31

Yeah, right now we really, we're really interested in helping out us, Texas and Mexico. Mexico City right now is heading towards a really crisis situation where they might run out of water in a month or two. I think the data said it's the end of June if it doesn't rain. So we're really focused on how do we connect with builders and communities in Mexico City to implement our product. Texas is also facing lots of drought and having drought issues across the south and eastern Texas. But I think those are two main areas right now for us. Although, We're also expanding our team. So that's actually one of the areas we're focusing on is letting people know that, Hey, you know, we're here to help provide a solution from Aquaria today. And if you have a water problem, perhaps we can help solve that for you today.

Tom Raftery: 19:39

Okay, cool. And what's the price point like? Because, you know, water is, reasonably inexpensive in most regions. So how long will it take to get a savings on purchasing a device like this if I am a homeowner?

Brian Sheng: 20:02

Yeah. So I guess, Tom, do you know how much you spend? Do you drink tap water or do you drink like packaged water?

Tom Raftery: 20:09

Tap

Brian Sheng: 20:10

Tap water. And did you get a filter for that tap water? It was already just good quality. Yeah.

Tom Raftery: 20:15

No, it's just good quality.

Brian Sheng: 20:17

Oh, okay. Well, then I guess that question doesn't really quite work. It's you already have great water to begin with. Let's see. Okay. So we will, so we actually have some of our units in offices. I think, I use office because for a homeowner, I think the payback period is just simply dependent on how much water you drink. I think about it, 100 liters, you can't drink that much water a day. So then, the payback period would be dependent on how much water, how much money you're actually spending on water. And the more you're actually spending on water right now, the more that we can save you. using our instead of buying packaged water instead. I think one of our investors actually save about a thousand U. S. dollars a month for the office because they used to get those big packaged what do you call those? Like 19 liter jugs. Those, Yeah.

Tom Raftery: 21:09

water, water coolers. Yeah. Okay.

Brian Sheng: 21:13

They save about a thousand dollars a month from us. And then for the bigger units, We're saving people. We're seeing that upwards of, you know, 50,000 US dollars instead of digging a well, they're placing our system on site instead. So, depending on which unit you purchase, again, we might be saving you a lot of costs upfront by digging, you know, instead of digging a well, or just very quickly instead of purchasing water bottles.

Tom Raftery: 21:42

And are you, is Aquaria the only company doing this? Because it sounds like the technology from what you're telling me is reasonably straightforward. You're just, you know, you, you've got a, a beer glass out there, condensing water. Are there other companies doing this or are you guys way out ahead or where are you in that kind of competitive landscape?

Brian Sheng: 22:10

Yeah, so making water from the air is not that hard. Like we just mentioned, a beer is making water from the air or any cold surface is making water from the air. But it's very difficult to make water from the air in, in large volume and in an energy efficient way because that's where the secret sauce is, is how do you produce enough water to have a meaningful impact on our water needs and also taking into account of what power input and the availability of power to do that. So, you know, that's where our technology focus on. We are not the only company to have come up with atmospheric water capture. There are a couple of other companies out there and actually I think there should be more. Some of those companies are also quite well funded by, you know, technology and venture capital investors. And I also think that there should be more companies. One, because we have a big water problem. Two, there's different ways and different, you know, kind of go to markets for this technology. And for us, we are really focused on the vision of being able to build a sustainable and secure water supply for entire cities. And so our technology is focused on high, extremely high utility scale water. How do we do that at scale? And then. over time continue to continue to decrease the energy needed to produce this water. So that's really how we think about the market.

Tom Raftery: 23:46

Okay. And do you partner with solar companies for the rollout or do you source solar panels yourselves and sell them as part of the solution or how does the solar aspect work?

Brian Sheng: 23:58

Yeah, because we're working with builders, we're prioritizing builders who are open to solar solutions or themselves are already installing solar. We're currently not partner with any solar companies yet, but if there's any audience member, you're a solar company, I'd love to talk to you and we can figure out a way to partner together to install more solar power and atmospheric water generators.

Tom Raftery: 24:22

In, in terms of scaling up for production, for example are you planning on ramping up manufacturer yourself or would you consider, or are you planning to license the technology to other manufacturers or what's, what's the route to scalability?

Brian Sheng: 24:39

Yeah, I think technology development and manufacturing is one of our core expertise and DNA. And so as we scale up our business, we definitely want to continue to hold that in house. So we would think about, you know, building out assembly plants in most of our major markets as we expand, you're looking at Europe, looking at the Middle East, right now we're in the US, we definitely, as we expand the business, want to have some aspects of manufacturing within within the business for sure.

Tom Raftery: 25:14

Okay. And just how low can you go? What I mean by that is what kind of percentage of relative humidity do you need in the atmosphere for you to be able to pull water out of it?

Brian Sheng: 25:32

Yeah, that's a great question. So there is a limitation there for our approach, our technology. We need at least 25 percent relative humidity to make meaningful amounts of water. In our which means are kind of in our current iteration of the technology we are not going after extremely arid regions under that number. It just wouldn't quite make sense in the production and the cost to do that unless you had infinite solar

Tom Raftery: 26:05

Right, right. I guess the flip side of it is in a hot climate, I guess relative humidity rises overnight, which counts against the solar, but it might mean that a home, a community, a city or whatever might end up making water overnight as the humidity goes up as opposed to during the day

Brian Sheng: 26:33

Exactly. And that's what our, you know, AI software optimization does is actually on top of the actual hardware that we created, we've also built optimization software where we take into account those things, Tom, that you mentioned, like what is the current humidity? What is the current temperature? What is the current energy pricing? What is the current need? All of those things we optimize so that when we're producing water, we're taking that into account. Like, for example, one of the reasons that we're using solar in Hawaii is that grid Electricity. Hawaii is extremely, extremely expensive north of 40 cents a kilowatt hour US versus places in like, Dubai or maybe even Mexico City. Actually, there's not that big of a difference between users using solar batteries and grid electricity one air, you know, of course it's preferred to use solar, but in terms of absolute pricing. You know, to your everyday customer, not much of a cost difference. It's about the same. So those are the things that our software takes account of.

Tom Raftery: 27:39

And are they connected devices, you know, can they look at week ahead weather forecasts and go, okay, well, tomorrow the relative humidity is going to be X percent. So I'll do Y.

Brian Sheng: 27:52

That's on our roadmap, Tom. You already hit it. That's, that's, that's, that's what we're envisioning for our software. We haven't done that yet, but it's, it's on, on the roadmap.

Tom Raftery: 28:01

Okay, cool. And where to next? I mean, you've, you've mentioned that that's on your roadmap. What else is on your roadmap? Where are you going? Where do you see this going in the next 3, 4, 5 years?

Brian Sheng: 28:15

Yeah. Well, unfortunately, I think it's becoming very apparent to us year after year that the water problem is getting worse. And not only is it getting worse, it's getting worse in many areas, like in the U. S. and even in Europe, in areas that we otherwise wouldn't have thought it would be a problem for us. And so, to Aquaria, we already see the writing on the wall that there's going to be more challenges with water faster and more urgent than we're prepared for. And so during these next three to five years, our role as a company is to demonstrate to any external party that our technology is stable. That our technology is proven that we're using this technology to build communities of the future, where we are sustainable, where we're secure, where we can showcase that water from the sky is a reality already. And as we continue to do that, bring the cost of our technology lower and lower so that more people can adopt it. And I think that's kind of the flywheel here that will continue to bring us to the broader masses, to more countries, not just more, you know, kind of, you know, partners and people in the U. S. But globally as well. So, you know, that's really how I see the flywheels working, not just for the next 3 to 5 years, but really for the next 10 plus years. Like, Tom, have you heard of atmospheric water capture before our podcast? I'm not

Tom Raftery: 29:59

I mean, I have but there, there are WEF videos, for example, World Economic Forum videos, for example, and others of people in South America who are using giant nets to capture humidity out of the air, but it's in a particularly humid environment typically.

Brian Sheng: 30:20

Right. Right, and it's a video, and I think that's great. We need more videos from any wide region organization, but I think the benchmark to compare that to, though, is there should be as at as many atmospheric water generators out there as solar panels, and there isn't even close by a far, far margin. So I think that's a good benchmark to think about where things need to be to support enough water.

Tom Raftery: 30:51

Cool. Brian, we're coming towards the end of the podcast now. Is there any question I haven't asked that you wish I had, or any aspect of this we haven't touched on that you think it's important for people to think about?

Brian Sheng: 31:03

Well, I think. It would it so 1st, I urge our audience to think about how water impacts their lives today. And, you know, even if you live in an area that has very clean and available water, like where we live, you know, I, myself you know, I, I, I want to speak to the audience to think about how does water maybe affect your business or other folks that, you know, you know, around the world. Because as I've experienced, and many of us have experienced already, it just might hit you closer to home than you ever expect to. And it is, we're only one event away from understanding that water problems is way more more difficult to solve at this current point than power power disruption issues. You know, I was in Japan over New Year's, kind of turn of the New Year's, and for, for, for a small holiday, and there was an earthquake in the Noto region of Japan, and now it's been, I think, five months? Power was restored maybe two months in. But even today, tens of thousands of homes don't have access to running water because there's not an easy way to fix your water supply, your energy, you could put up solar panels to get some backup diesel and up. And so, you know, I think that's a very important thing to think about is that we're at that tipping point where a lot of our natural water systems are not actually secure enough to support our you know, various needs. And so this is something to be top of mind and to be more conversational about it. Yeah, and that's my general encouragement because as we become more educated about the issue, then people will actually think about, invest into, and adopt these new technologies.

Tom Raftery: 32:49

Okay, great, great, super. Brian, if people would like to know more about yourself or any of the things we discussed in the podcast today, where would you have me direct them?

Brian Sheng: 32:59

I welcome them to reach out to me directly on LinkedIn. They can put Tom's podcast or, you know, climate confident or whatever they like, you know, so I know that you're coming in from the show or something like that, but I'm very active there and I'd love to hear from anyone directly.

Tom Raftery: 33:15

Superb. Great. Brian, that's been really interesting. Thanks so much for coming on the podcast today.

Brian Sheng: 33:20

Thank you so much for having me, Tom. And yeah, I'm really excited to be here and hope to chat with you soon again.

Tom Raftery: 33:28

Okay, we've come to the end of the show. Thanks everyone for listening. If you'd like to know more about the Climate Confident podcast, feel free to drop me an email to tomraftery at outlook. com or message me on LinkedIn or Twitter. If you like the show, please don't forget to click follow on it in your podcast application of choice to get new episodes as soon as they're published. Also, please don't forget to rate and review the podcast. It really does help new people to find the show. Thanks. Catch you all next time.