4Supported by In Association with

PechaKuchaEDF Sustainable Design Challenge

In Collaboration with

4Kristin B. Lubenow

PROBLEM:There are places on Earth where there’s

not enough rainfall to grow food.

Some places hardly get any water at all.

And some places alternate between bone dry and flooding.

And in some places, the water doesn’t penetrate deep enough and evaporates before it could nourish plants.

Two high school students from San Francisco

decided to find a solution.

Nick and Tim Werby worked with UC Berkeley School of Engineering to design a cost-effective and practical product.

IDEA:Create a simple product that would collect atmospheric water (dew, fog, rain) and transportit below the evaporation layer in the ground.

Solution:• Atmospheric Water Capture

• Easy Maintenance

• Easy to Understand

• Cheap

• Recyclable

• Flexible

Condensation:• Water collects on surfaces colder than the surrounding air

• In desert environment, this water evaporates before reaching plant roots

• Farmer can’t grow enough food due to lack of irrigation even in the presence of atmospheric water

Condense atmospheric water on a surface and transport it deep enough

into the ground to keep the

moisture from evaporating

during the day.

Easy Maintenance

No electricity;No moving parts;No supervision;Simple to make.

Simple to Understand

Stick in the ground next to a plant.

Communicate use with a pictogram.

Cheap & Small

There are many atmospheric

water collection solutions. We focus on the

cheap and the small. We are targeting poor

subsistence farming

populations.

Flexibility and Customization

D.R.I.P.S. Project

Flexible & Customizable

D.R.I.P.S. Project

Extra Food & Little Cost

D.R.I.P.S. Project

Extra Food & Little Cost

D.R.I.P.S. Project

2011 EDF Sustainable Design Challenge Winner

D.R.I.P.S. Project

2012 Challenge: Develop a Working Prototype

Moving from concept to a fully-realized product is

very hard.

Tim and Nick decided to develop an inspirational

prototype.

Using the grant from EDF, the boys worked with artists to develop a DRIPS prototype...

There are MANY different solutions to atmospheric water collection problem.

DRIPSproject.com is a large library of solutions with links to companies that

make various atmospheric water collection systems and to research on how atmospheric water can be used

in agriculture.

4Supported by In Association with

PechaKuchaEDF Sustainable Design Challenge

In Collaboration with