Make water out of air? Utahn goes with the flow

WASHINGTON — An Ogden-based company has finished bringing fresh, cool water to 183 cities along the southeastern coast, but it never poured from a bottle along the way.

Instead, Jonathan Wright, of Ogden, just made the water from air.

Wright and his partner, David Richards, who used to live in Ogden but now lives in Colorado, have created AquaMagic — a machine that filters air, condenses the moisture in it, purifies the water and then dispenses it from a spigot on the side. The company claims what comes out is even cleaner than bottled water.

The initial idea was to sell smaller machines to developing countries to help eliminate water-borne diseases and create a supply of fresh drinking water. But after a tsunami hit the Indian Ocean in 2004 and hurricanes destroyed the Gulf Coast last year, Wright and Richards saw a need for disaster-relief efforts.

The pair met through mutual friends and started working on the idea four years ago. Wright said it was a "huge investment of money and time" to get the product up and running.

The first machine was done in June.

The machine is not meant to serve a Superdome-size crowd of victims but instead help first responders and emergency personnel get the hydration they need to do their jobs, Wright said. Machines are built to order and start at $35,000.

The machine can generate 120 gallons per day out of the air, or 1,000 16-ounce bottles of water. It runs on 50 gallons of diesel fuel, which Richards said is usually more available after a storm. Wright said one gallon of diesel can fuel the production of 10 gallons of water.

Richards pointed out that bottled water disappears quickly after a disaster, and sometimes even before. Crews coming in from other areas to help with disaster relief can use the machine to create their own water supply.

"If you don't bring it with you, you don't have it," Richards said.

The two went on a 183-city "Hurricane Zone Tour" to demonstrate the "cloud-in-a-box" machine to local emergency officials and planners in towns from Texas to Virginia. The official season for hurricanes runs 183 days, so Wright and Richards picked that many cities to visit.

One potential buyer is David Roberts, who as fire chief in Biloxi, Miss., oversaw crews working in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which leveled much of his city.

"You don't realize how bad you need water until you don't have it," Roberts said. "In August, the humidity's 95 percent and it's 95 degrees. You can drink a quart of water, and it goes right out of you in about 30 minutes."

He called the AquaMagic machine "a great piece of equipment. The water tasted good, too."