Prime Minister Narendra Modi's idea of extracting water from the atmosphere by wind turbines has been suggested as 'implausible' by an expert from a wind turbine manufacturing facility based in Chennai.
A turbine could be connected to a solar still — an old contraption used to distal water — to make it more efficient at distillation, reported The Hindu. “Too much moisture would be corrosive, too little would make it inefficient for the purpose of trapping condensate. However, far more energy would be expended in extracting too little water. It’s a technology demonstrator but not something that can be realistically implemented anywhere,” said the expert on conditions of anonymity.
Earlier PM Modi said that "...in places where there is higher level of moisture, wind turbines can extract water from the atmosphere and could produce clean drinking water. Thus, wind turbines can produce power and on the backside, suck moisturised air and extract water."
Suggesting such a mechanism for coastal areas where drinking water is scarce, PM Modi requested Henrik Andersen, the CEO of Vesta Wind Systems, a Danish maker of wind turbines, if his organisation could develop the technology.
Anderson replied that the PM's idea conveyed 'passion' and 'excitement', and the idea would keep the engineers of his organisation 'very busy'.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi took a jibe on the prime minister and tweeted, "The real danger to India isn’t that our PM doesn’t understand. It’s the fact that nobody around him has the guts to tell him."
Many other social media users were also seen trolling PM Narendra Modi over the issue.