Water from the air: Spanish engineer supplies drinking water across the world

By Fermín Cabanillas

Seville, Spain, Aug 14 (EFE).- Enrique Veiga arrived in Seville in 1965, a young engineer from the other side of Spain setting out to work not only for his employer, but for society at large.

Now at 82 years of age, Veiga might have achieved just that, having engineered a machine capable of generating water from the air, as if from nothing at all, that has made its way across the world to guarantee water supply in places like Lebanon, Iran, and China.

In 1992, he tells Efe, “a drought caused great concern,” which inspired him to build a machine able to harness the humidity around it, producing drinking water by condensing H2O particles in the air.

“We have made a reliable machine, capable of producing the water we need, so we thought of sending it to those in need, and we delivered our first 1,200 litre machine,” says Veiga. “We have worked with 40ºC temperatures at about 20% humidity levels.”

“The largest machine we’ve made is now in Iran, it produces 15,000 litres of water,” says the inventor, whose company Aquaer has also provided a Vietnamese investor with one of these machines to supply a refugee camp in Lebanon.

As he shows off the machine to Efe, with thermometers at 34 degrees, pure, crystalline and cold water made its way through the tap with no issues.

His newest iteration of the machine already has a set destination: it will produce drinking water in an oil platform in the China Sea.

The 82-year-old supervises every detail himself, delighted and proud of having managed to build a profitable company that also helps the most vulnerable, because not having drinking water available, as he says, is the cruelest form of poverty one could have to live through. EFE

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