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As we all know water that in many of the countries or states we find a lot of water scarcity. I wonder if water could be produced by artificial technology. I searched about this in google but I find other techniques like recycling of water,and also about bringing out the penetrated water etc. But I could not find such machine or technology that is able to produce or generate water. If the idea of generating water artificially successful then we could be able to overcome the water scarcity . I wanted to know whether this kind of technology is already invented or not.

Ch.Vandana
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    Creating water artificially is super easy; that's not the question. The question is "where is the money". – Ivan Neretin Sep 30 '20 at 09:42
  • Burn natural gas, maybe? – Oscar Lanzi Sep 30 '20 at 09:42
  • Not really generated, but in effect the same: There is an ongoing project with already built prototypes of capacity hundreds L of / day, working with solar energy, based on condensation of air humidity on cold condensers. They are aimed on hot arid countries, where is plenty of solar energy, but water is scarce. – Poutnik Sep 30 '20 at 09:50
  • P.S.: Solar Air Water Earth Resource (S.A.W.E.R.) – Poutnik Sep 30 '20 at 10:29
  • Does this answer your question? Can you artificially create molecules with a machine? – Nilay Ghosh Sep 30 '20 at 10:45
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    2/3 of the world is covered with water. water isn't scarce. Potable water is scarce. So why "create" it from scratch when you can desalinate it to make it potable? – matt_black Sep 30 '20 at 10:55
  • @matt_black globality versus locality. Where is no water it cannot be desalinated. – Poutnik Sep 30 '20 at 10:58
  • @Poutnik How many countries with notable populations are entirely desert with no nearby access to water? And, if there are any, what is the relative cost of building a pipeline to the sea versus water vapour capture or (as the question seems to want) the cost of shipping hydrogen and oxygen to the location so water can be created? – matt_black Sep 30 '20 at 11:17
  • @matt_black Producing water from transported hydrogen or building a pipeline across the Sahara desert are not enterprises I would like to invent in. – Poutnik Sep 30 '20 at 11:21
  • @Poutnik Precisely. But there are already pipelines across the sahara, though they transmit oil and gas, not water. On the other hand almost nobody lives in the locations where the oil is produced so that is pretty irrelevant. If people wanted to live in the middle of a desert with no local access to water (and they never do), then by far the cheapest solution would be a pipeline plus desalination. – matt_black Sep 30 '20 at 11:27
  • @matt_black There are many living locations across the world where water sources exist, but are limited, and where is not enough people to put a pipeline from the very far, or money for it. The pipeline end water quality could be very questionable. Additionally, there may be not an external source of electricity. A supplementary and autonomous water source, e.g. for agriculture activities, or even drinking, can be handy. – Poutnik Sep 30 '20 at 11:34
  • Let us continue this discussion in chat. – Poutnik Sep 30 '20 at 11:45
  • I see others go to details and variations. The answer is easy. Yes one can generate water by any combustion. So you can se that is not viable. Except if one burn hydrogen. But the latter must be made. This requires energy. The only way would be to get that energy from the sun. This is ongoing research, indeed. However the day it will be available, in the form of hydrogen, it will be firstly used to replace fossil. That can be also used for desalination, rather than direct water production. – Alchimista Sep 30 '20 at 12:13
  • @Alchimista Sure, when sea water is available, desalination is preferred. – Poutnik Sep 30 '20 at 12:59
  • OT but not much. Just not at country scale. Niche applications do exist. For instance fuel cells are a real thing. They provide a controlled oxidisation of oxygen leading to both electricity and, after addition of salts, drinkable water. Except for the scale this is what most answers your question. Used in space, for instance. – Alchimista Oct 01 '20 at 15:16

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Put some $O_{2}$ and $H_{2}$ in a chamber, give it some activation energy and boom, you got some water.

However, mixing a flammable gas with a strong oxidizer can make things a little interesting.

Plus we would be manufacturing large amounts, making the process very dangerous (i.e. expensive equipment is needed)

  • the process can be done safely on any scale. that isn't the problem. How many countries with no access to, say sea water to desalinate, have ready access to supplies of oxygen and hydrogen? – matt_black Sep 30 '20 at 11:19
  • @matt_black I would assume that a country who has trouble accessing H2 and O2 supplies would also have trouble accessing the equipment required to safely carry out the reaction. –  Sep 30 '20 at 11:21
  • @matt_black the reactions would require large reaction vessels, condensers, etc. So yea access to the necessary reactants may be limited, but so is the access to a lot of other things. Just two perspectives on the same problem. –  Sep 30 '20 at 11:33
  • Water for steam oxidation of silicon in semiconductor processing is made by burning hydrogen and oxygen. Primarily this is done to meet the purity requirements. – Jon Custer Sep 30 '20 at 13:56
  • @JonCuster I never suggested that the reaction between hydrogen and oxygen isn’t used. Simply, to produce the quantities needed to supply a city or developing country would required large equipment that can withstand the reaction. Therefore the process is expensive and dangerous, but (obviously) not impossible –  Sep 30 '20 at 14:14
  • @dval98 - understood. Actually the comment was more to show how rare it would be to do water generation at an industrial scale. Ultra high purity is the only reason to do it for semiconductor processing. – Jon Custer Sep 30 '20 at 14:17
  • @JonCuster my apologies then. Disregard my comment. Sorry for the misunderstanding –  Sep 30 '20 at 14:18
  • @dval98 - I'm not sure I phrased my comment clearly enough, so no worries... – Jon Custer Sep 30 '20 at 14:40