Australian designer Edward Linacre wins James Dyson Award for turning air into water
From:mX November 10, 20119:05AM
AN Australian designer has won this year's James Dyson Award with an invention that sounds more like magic than science and the inventor owes his success to an unassuming beetle.
Edward Linacre's elegant Airdrop irrigation system literally pulls water out of thin air and may finally solve the problem of drought-affected agricultural land.
The 27-year-old beat a range of designers and innovators to take the $15,500 award, which aims to support design, technology and engineering education, medical research charities and local community projects.
Airdrop is a low-cost, self-powered solution to growing crops in arid regions.
After the country's worst drought in a century, Linacre, a former student at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, turned to nature to find ways of capturing moisture from air.
He studied the Namib beetle, an ingenious species that lives in one of the driest places on earth.
With 1.3cm of rain a year, the beetle can only survive by consuming the dew it collects on the hydrophilic skin of its back in the early mornings.
Airdrop uses the same concept, working on the principle that even the driest air contains water molecules that can be extracted by lowering the air's temperature to the point of condensation.
It pumps air through a network of underground pipes to cool it to the point at which the water condenses, delivering water directly to the roots of plants.
Linacre, who was highly commended at the recent Australian International Design Awards, said: "Winning the prize will mean I can develop and test the Airdrop system. It has the potential to help farmers around the world and I'm up for the challenge of rolling it out."
