Uniting Sustainable Homes & Atmospheric Water Solutions with Aquaria

Transcript:

Bob Worsley:
Brian, thanks for joining us today. This is going to be a fun conversation around water, drinking water, potable water, and getting it in a very different way than anything that we're used to with piping things from a city to your house into the house, et cetera. So real pleasure to have you on today. Why don't you introduce us to yourself and to the company and let's get started right there. Thanks, Brian.

Brian Sheng:
Sounds great, Bob. Thanks for having me. I'm super excited to dig in today and talk about different ways that we make water, but then also in the context of potential collaborations with Denny Home. So really excited to be here. Well, quick introduction on the company and myself. I'm Brian Zhang. I'm CEO and founder of Aquaria. And at Aquaria, we're focused on addressing clean access to water by creating water from the air around us. And actually, so I'll demonstrate later when appropriate. of our machines right behind us. I'm sitting in my house today and this is how I drink water and so I'm happy to, you know, really excited to share more about Aquaria today.

Bob Worsley:
Great. The technology behind Aquaria's atmospheric water harvesting device is fascinating. We've seen a few things out there for a couple years. Could you provide an overview of how these devices work and the key principles behind their ability to generate clean and sustainable potable water from the atmosphere?

Brian Sheng:
Yeah, absolutely. I think Bob, you touched upon a really interesting point, which is how we get water today, and historically ever has always been from the ground or below, whether that's a river, aquifer, reservoir, or whatever it might be. But instead, where we're looking at the new frontier is we're looking to the sky for a new source of water. I think many people don't know how much water we have in the air. But at any given time, we have about 38 million billion gallons of water. And put that to context, even if everybody on Earth used 100 gallons of water a day, that's only 0.025% of the water available. Point is, there's a lot of water here. So the question is then, using our technology, how do we get water from the air into liquid form as effectively as possible? So... Actually, the principles behind it, I think a lot of us understand. On a hot summer day, we go into the fridge, we take out a cold drink, a cold beer. There's water droplets that form. So that's really the simplistic version of it is you have a cold source, you meet hot air, and then liquid condensation forms. But for us, using Aquarius patented technology, what we're doing is we are using heat exchange materials and then we're recycling the hot air. source of hot and cold bringing them together and then that condensates liquid water in an energy efficient way. The secret here or really the key point in here is making water from the air both high quality and as energy efficient as possible because what that translates to is the cost of that water and in order and by only by focusing on the R&D around this technology can we make clean water affordably.

Bob Worsley:
Wow. There's all kinds of applications here we're going to talk about here in just a minute, but as Zenni Home focuses on providing sustainable and efficient housing solutions, how do you see the integration of Aquaria's atmospheric water harvesting devices complementing our vision for off-grid and environmentally friendly housing developments?

Brian Sheng:
Yeah, absolutely. And actually, Bob, after I give my answer, I kind of want to ask you also about the ways that, how Zeni Homes view sustainability, because that's really what attracted me to Zeni Homes when I first found out about the company, is about scalability, sustainability, and it's a modular way of building homes. Because if you replace those words for us, that's the same thing we look for. We're looking for a sustainable way to make a scalable, but also modular way of creating clean water. So... If we look at water today, and this is directly relevant to building homes as well, there's large construction process and there's a lot of time permitting involved. Same thing with water. When you build a water facility, whether it's a treatment plant or a desalination plant, a lot of time, a lot of costs, a lot of people involved. But obviously for our... living needs and our water needs, we need to be more flexible. So what was really interesting is, when I looked at the ability for Zeni homes to be put in different locations and be able to build quickly, and then also using sustainable materials and incorporating different energy sources, that really resonated with me because when we think about water, we also have to think about the setting for where you use that water. And pretty much it's always, well, maybe you can consider different settings, but it's around a building, whether you're at your house or you're in your office or you're on vacation, wherever it might be, you get your water next to some type of property. And so being that, you know, Zeni Home is able to be, you know, you can construct Zeni Homes anywhere. And so... thinking about how do you provide water for that? Well, I think that's where some of the really interesting opportunities come. We can deploy water from the air and that can be in various sizes for something as small as this, all the way to 40 feet containers. But even 40 feet container is really small compared to the size of, you know, a big water facility. So I think it's like Lego blocks and how to how to how to make them come together to provide a holistic solution for the users. I think that's where it's really exciting.

Bob Worsley:
Well, one of the great opportunities we're thinking about is when you take a state like Arizona, and we just had this massive controversy, the Washington Post just certified that we've been using too much groundwater, California's been using too much groundwater, and there may not be 100 year certified water supplies issued for developers who have bought land to build homes. and cannot get the 100 year certified water supply. And so what we would like to do is offer what we call a planet wise Zeni home, which would be water that's off grid, internet that's off grid, sewer that's off grid, and electricity that's off grid. We already do the power with PV inverters, batteries off grid, that's pretty straightforward now. We know that Starlink gives Ukraine and all of us a broadband connection off grid, and you can work from anywhere with the Starlink system. So now you're linked up with a voiceover IP for a telephone, and you have internet bandwidth anywhere in the world. Then you look at new sewer options, which we can talk about in a minute, but your solution gives us an opportunity to get water anywhere. without all that infrastructure. Water treatment facilities, taking river water, canal water, lake water, and then trying to process it, clean it to potable standards, and then somehow pipe it to your house. It's a huge expense. So if we could build all of that in the factory using something we can buy from you, it just seems like you've just taken three of the... issues and put it completely to bed and now we just need to work on sewer which we can talk about in just a minute. So tell me how to scale this so that we could like build a whole subdivision in Arizona or California providing potable water from your solution.

Brian Sheng:
Thanks for watching! Absolutely. And Bob, I think this is a follow-up question for me, is actually this directly relates to the sustainability part. Because from our end is actually fairly simple. We evaluate, well, it's always customer centric. So in this case, we collaborated and we asked, well, we're an expert in water production. I would love to understand, from Zany Homes' perspective, how you guys think about, let's say, water today. How are you getting water today for the homes that you're building? And then also how you're thinking about sustainability, because water and the use of that water is related to sustainability. And then, but on top of that also, is that we need energy to produce water. Water and energy are always linked. And I also saw that there are a lot of energy options for Zenni Home, so I'd love to learn a little bit more about Zenni Home and how you're thinking about sustainability in that way for the product.

Bob Worsley:
Okay, so let's just talk about each of these individually.

Brian Sheng:
Okay.

Bob Worsley:
First of all, the water that gets used in a home, you know, the most ridiculous thing we do today is we take all this treated water that's been very expensively treated and then very expensively brought to a home, and we water our grass, we water our plants with potable water. And then, We run potable water into our washer dryer, our washing machine process, our showers, et cetera. And so we believe that what we've already done, and I don't think there's any other home builder doing this today, is that we take all the plumbing in the home and we've created two different systems. So there's a gray water system and there's a black water system. And so instead of having all water go to one place, just like water coming from the tap comes from one place, all potable, we're trying to be more sophisticated and divide it into two. So if you're showering or if you're in a sink, if you're taking water from the washer dryer process in your home, it's going into a gray water system in our home. And it goes out to the edge of the house where you would attach sewer. and it's there waiting for you to be smart with that gray water. I.E. $400 on Amazon buys you a charcoal filter. That water can be used on plants, grass, whatever on the outside. So we're not wasting that water. Second of all, if it's a toilet or the garbage disposal, that goes to black water. That black water today goes to your septic, sewer, or some kind of other system. We are working with another company, Brian, like yours, called Busa out of Germany. For 20 years, they've taken that water and they've created almost drinking water quality. And it's now approved in Arizona and Utah and various states. And so we're looking at maybe a $10,000 unit that would attach to the black water where we would actually capture 98% of the water that came in the home and turned it back into near drinking water quality to be reused. Now, if we could top off with your unit, the Aquarius system, potable water that you would typically drink and maybe cook with, I think we have without plumbing, we could actually keep a virtuous supply from the street without any connection to street sewer water, we could keep a virtuous supply of water. almost indefinitely without hauling water to the home with your system. What do you think of that idea?

Brian Sheng:
I think it's really great to hear that there's a separation going on here, because I think that's one of the biggest strategies is to use potable clean water to waste it. There's so many communities today across the US that don't have access to clean drinking water. And distribution of water and the recycling on a house to house basis and also for commercial properties as well. That's a huge area of opportunity to create more sustainability around water use. So to hear that there's this sewer, smart sewer process that can separate gray water, black water, and then the potential to stack aquaria systems on top of that, I think that is a very efficient use of the property itself. And then the kind of the segmentation of water as well. Like just think hearing about it, I can imagine because we mentioned about like scalability and larger properties, we can, for example, for tap systems, only the tap system, we can create clean water for cooking, for drinking, and that can be dispersed around the entire commercial property, no matter how big. And then, because if we look at the average amount of water use per day, you obviously want to drink about three liters or like, at most a gallon of water a day per person, and if you account cooking water and life water where you need portable water quality there, then you're talking about, let's say, maybe, 30 gallons a day, 20, 30 gallons, that's really already a lot. And so, you know, one of our machines that produce 250 gallons can easily serve 10 families or 10 units up to 50 people. You can put that on the roof, you can put that on the side of the building, and then the configuration could be, well, really whatever is needed. Because for us, we can produce units like this that are just, well, it just sits on your countertop and the experience is not... very different from even having a water cooler. The only difference is there's no water source except the air. And then you can have larger units that can connect to a tank or connect to your plumbing or just be a dispensing machine by itself. So I think all of those are great possibilities depending on where there's any home is deployed and what the needs might be.

Bob Worsley:
And Brian, how much water will the unit on the counter behind you? How much water can that make a day in your home?

Brian Sheng:
So this unit behind me, which the camera might be a little bit skewing, but it's basically the size of my head and my shoulders. So it's kind of like a microwave sized unit. This unit can produce up to about three gallons a day of water. Now, if you're in a drier area, might produce one and a half gallons. Really dry area might be around a gallon or so. But that's... that's really the range. This small unit produces enough water for the family to drink, up to three gallons a day.

Bob Worsley:
And there's no need to have that outside. It just sits on your counter and uses the humidity in the home.

Brian Sheng:
Correct, yes. So this unit, because the capacity is only three gallons, you can put it really anywhere. And then for our larger units, because we're creating large volumes of water, we have to put them. side so they can consistently draw in more air and create lots of more water. And plus you probably don't want a 20 feet container in your home anyways if you are getting to that large scale of water production. Put it in your backyard, put it in a shed, you know, in a shed. As long as there's open air flow for the larger ones, that's no problem.

Bob Worsley:
And Brian, I know you're starting and you're raising money on WeFund like we are. Can you give us just a real sense of where you're targeting the retail price to be for these units, the one behind you leading up to the one that you talked about that could do 250 gallons outside?

Brian Sheng:
Sure, absolutely. So our units, so actually let's start with the units right behind me. This unit will retail for just $1,000. This is our most affordable unit and we want to make it as affordable as possible. So this can be bought by anybody and just straight through e-commerce and then use this unit. And then our units, let's say the 250 gallon unit, that's a slightly large unit. It's about the size of a dining table. And that unit retails for $30,000. And then we have larger units that goes up to the container size, which are six figures and more commercial in nature. But because of our WeFundr campaign, our goal right now is really to spread the message and let people know that Aquaria as a technology today exists. It is a form of technology that's not in the movies. It's here today. If you wanted to drink water, this is how I drink water. So if you go on WeFundr campaign today, we're offering discounts on all of our models to make sure we get our early customers or our supporters and that they can be supported equally on the pricing.

Bob Worsley:
Excellent. Okay, so the unit behind you, a thousand, the unit you talked about that might be able to handle ten families would be in the neighborhood of 30,000. Is that accurate? Great, Brian.

Brian Sheng:
Yes,

Bob Worsley:
Thank

Brian Sheng:
correct.

Bob Worsley:
you. Thank you so much for that. I'm sure everybody's asking that question of us right now. So we're partnering with the Navajo Nation to address the housing crisis on the nation. And over half the people that live on the Navajo Nation do not have running water. And they actually will haul totes in the back of their pickups with 250 to 350 gallons out to their home. They call them scattered home sites

Brian Sheng:
Mm.

Bob Worsley:
on the nation. It's the largest nation in the country, the largest Native American nation. And it's the largest in geography as well as population. And we want to help them. because it's 20, 30, $40,000, even if there's a water line nearby to get that water to their house. So they keep one of these totes in the back of their pickups and fill it up in town and bring 200 or 300 gallons out to the home on a consistent base, maybe several times a week to have potable water at the home. So we would love to consider your... expertise in this area? And could you envision a potential partnership between Zenni Home and Aquaria and the Navajo Nation to collaboratively address both housing and water challenges working together to create a more sustainable and transformative impact on the community, the Navajo Nation?

Brian Sheng:
I think this is a very much a value alignment for us to be able to collaborate in that way. Aquaria is not just a water technology company. We were formed as a public benefit corporation and our mission is to unlock access to clean water. And while we are a for-profit company, our mission is very... important to us as well. In fact, right now I'm based in Los Angeles. We're working directly with the City of Los Angeles and the Sustainability Office to figure out how we can bring our solutions to underserved and frontline communities that have clean water access challenges. So when I was talking to David the other day about the possibility of deploying to Navajo Nation, that was super exciting to me because on Navajo Nation, I've done my research and And so having the ability to, well, it's having the ability to bring our product to those most in need, I think that's a super exciting opportunity. And it's also really big props to your company, Bob, to be able to work with Navajo Nation as well. I know that's not an easy partnership to achieve.

Bob Worsley:
No, there's been a lot of distrust, as you can imagine. The First Nations in Canada and the Native American people in America, I mean, they were here first, and we kind of came second and have relegated them to reservations, reserved lands by the federal government for them to occupy. And it's all the way around has been a bad situation for them. And so to be able to come back and they have 52% unemployment, over half the homes don't have water or even a bathroom. They're going outside to a John to go to the bathroom. They don't have sewer systems, no bathrooms. 90% of the homes on the Navajo Nation are considered unlivable. They bought something very low quality and have lived in it longer than its life expectancy. So there's 40,000 homes of which 90% have to be replaced. There's only 6,500 homes on the entire Navajo Nation that are considered livable, safe homes to live in. So we hope to fix that, but we need to solve the water issue because the culture... prefers living in a mother earth, father sky, long ways away from each other with sheep and other animals that have helped them survive over the years. They don't like to live in clustered communities. So it's very difficult to get scale for power, for water, for sewer out to these scattered home sites. So this is a perfect solution where we could bring them homes from the factory that come equipped with all of the things that they need to live a modern lifestyle and still live remotely in their scattered home sites.

Brian Sheng:
Hmm.

Bob Worsley:
It looks, it looks like it could be really ideal to work together on this. Can you tell me how factory scale up is going to work and how many units. you'll think you'll be able to build. And I'd also like to like you to address the taste of the water. I know when you're condensing water, it's missing some minerals that we typically taste in water. Is there any kind of mineral additive that happens so that it tastes like drinking water out of a water bottle, for example, you might buy?

Brian Sheng:
Yeah, absolutely. So the water we create does have trace amounts of minerals and the taste, we've done a lot of work around our purification and filtration technology to make sure that taste is top quality. And we also have the option, and this is actually a request we get from different. customers, commercial customers that are looking to drinking waters specifically. For example, we have a customer right now who is looking at a 100,000 gallon water facility to do bottled water, packaged atmospheric mineral water. So their request would be we want XYZ alkalinity or minerals, and then we do a custom order for them to be able to create a profile of pH or profile of minerals on top of that. So that's a, that's more, that's simply a custom filtration addition. So basically once the clean filtered water passes through, then we run that through an additional set of mineral filters so we can remineralize the water for the needs of the customer. And this, we found out that even tastes sort of vary in between different countries. Not everyone likes the same type of tasting water and have different preferences there. But yeah, so that's more customized to the need of the customer when we're talking about larger scale deployments of units. We currently have the ability, like I mentioned before, to produce units like this size, all the way up to 40 feet containers. And we're not at that scale yet, but our production facility is capable of producing up to 10,000 units of This is called the hydro station. We can produce up to 10,000 units of this per year at the moment. And then, well, then that's actually why also we are raising capital right now so we can increase our awareness in the market for our product. Right now we have the capability to support all of our own demand right now. And then for our larger units, they are more on. ad hoc basis, but we can also produce about a thousand of the large units per year now as well.

Bob Worsley:
Do you have any idea how long this might last, the unit behind you, without a lot of service, and how much power it might consume?

Brian Sheng:
Yeah, sure. So the power rating on the machine, so the machine is rated to last four or five years. And the large outdoor machines are industrial commercial grade, so they're rated for 10 years. And so actually, I have to mention that this machine should not be placed outdoors. Actually, this is supposed to be an indoor. household appliance versus the outdoor units are supposed to be outdoors. So they are made to withstand mother nature. This type of unit looks quite sleek. It's more supposed to be like an apple-like product for your home. Should not be standing in the rain outside. So anyways, yeah, so this unit by itself, the maintenance you need to do on the machine is really just changing the filters once in a while. When I say a while, because it... is related to the quality of the air around you. If you are in a place with fairly good air quality, then the frequency of change of the filters is fairly low, maybe once every six to eight months, if you're in a place. I won't say exactly where, but we've also deployed our units to cities that have very, very high pollution. And in those cases, we've had to change filters as frequently as once a month. because the air pollution was just way too high. And so it would clog up the filters, but then you just have to, that's just because the source is the air and we have to make sure the water quality is high, but we have to make sure the purification and filtration is done properly. So really ranges, but I would say that for most places in the United States, I think we're looking at once every four to six months should be enough to change the filters.

Bob Worsley:
And then the power rating, how much power does it take to run the unit?

Brian Sheng:
Yeah, so our units, we produce water for roughly around 250 watt hours per liter. So this is a 300 watt unit. And so this again, this is a household unit. And then our large machines, the HydroPak, the 250 gallon unit that's rated at 11 kilowatts, because that's producing up to 250 gallons a day. And so roughly the numbers are all around. 250 to 300 watt hours per liter of water, so that you can multiply that by whatever the production amount and you understand how much electricity it consumes. But basically the math we do is it takes about, you know, one kilowatt of energy produces about three liters to three, let's just say, three liters of water, so then the cost to produce that water, depending on your electricity cost, is a couple of pennies.

Bob Worsley:
Yes. So if I'm in Phoenix, Arizona, I'm paying 12 cents kilowatt hour, 12 cents for three liters, I might be paying four cents for a liter of water.

Brian Sheng:
I would have to say that in Phoenix, Arizona, where the humidity is perhaps

Bob Worsley:
So.

Brian Sheng:
sometimes very, very low, then I would say that calculation would be a little bit more because

Bob Worsley:
Hmm.

Brian Sheng:
just like solar, there's cloud cover, not as much sun, it wouldn't produce as much electricity. It's the same for us. So there is a band for production. But even if you said one kilowatt made one liter, then that would be around, well, that would be 12 cents. So it depends on the humidity level to really, but that's the maximum it will take.

Bob Worsley:
And that's a bargain. 12 cents for a liter of bottled water, that's a bargain. Any way you look at it. So that sounds wonderful. So let's see, are there any other questions we want to ask you before we turn it over to the audience? We've talked about power. We've talked about

Brian Sheng:
Excellent.

Bob Worsley:
this.

Brian Sheng:
I would love to know a little bit more about Power Bob for the Zeni homes. I know that it comes with a solar option and maybe even batteries. I would love to ask you about how that's placed on the Zeni homes.

Bob Worsley:
Well, we got our first power bill last month for Mesa, where we have our unit in a, what we call a grid tide. We've been operating for four months, five months there without any power from the city. And we

Brian Sheng:
Mm.

Bob Worsley:
did a grid tie, what we call a net metering deal with the city. And my first power bill was $10. So most of the power needed for Zenni Home was coming from the solar and the battery. and just tapping into a little bit of power from time to time. If you think about it, during the middle of the day, you're probably making more power than you're using with solar. We have 10kW on top of our citizen unit, 10kW. And so you're probably

Brian Sheng:
Mm.

Bob Worsley:
sending a few electrons, dribbling a few electrons to the city. And then during the night, maybe early in the morning when the battery is depleted, you'll be using a little bit as you get up in the morning from the city. So we're guessing that we'll see how many kilowatt hours over the course of the month, we're able to not use from the city and have a net balance. We're hoping to eventually get obviously to a net zero electricity use, but that'll take more years to get more efficient on everything that we use. But this is great that there's 12 cent bottled water possible with your product in our homes. We use a little bit more electricity, but you're not out buying bottled water with the Aquaria unit in the home. And it's not that expensive, I think, as an option. It would be wise for every single person that's buying a unit that they would get this standard with their purchase of our homes. And I'm really excited about not having to see the Navajo families haul water from Page, Arizona, for an hour out to Kaivato. where most of our employees live. It would be lovely.

Brian Sheng:
Especially if you mentioned like community living and so

Bob Worsley:
Yes.

Brian Sheng:
small communities, you can have a aquarium, water station, hydropack, let's say even to serve multiple families, it doesn't even have to be piped. or into a tank, it can simply just be a standalone station and people can just fill up their water using the communal station that stands there without having to pipe it through. I mean, obviously piping into the home could be an option, but then also you could not pipe it, I just have it there. And then we have a, even for our larger machines, we have the free dispense option, just like this machine. So you can just press a button and use, you know, we have four dispensing hoses. And so you can use it as a standalone water station

Bob Worsley:
Great, great. Let's see, I'm going to let you ask me a few questions. And then I'm going to pop up my Slack screen here and make sure that we're getting all the questions from the audience here. So go

Brian Sheng:
Yeah,

Bob Worsley:
ahead. Do

Brian Sheng:
okay.

Bob Worsley:
you have any questions for me, Brian?

Brian Sheng:
Yeah, absolutely. So we talked about Navajo Nation, and then also, Bob, you mentioned the mesa in Arizona property. So where are the locations you see ZeniHome focusing on deployment? Is it more focused on off-grid and remote opportunities? Or is it just everyone, anyone, everyone who are other customers that are using ZeniHomes?

Bob Worsley:
Well, there's a lot of people, you know, you talk about the prepper industry that wants to be off grid and completely not dependent. So there's some areas where we're close in Arizona to some areas where people that are trying to get completely off grid. They're they're hot real estate markets for that. And so I would say the snowflake Taylor solo area of Arizona Stafford Arizona of Arizona. there's a lot of people moving there that wanna be completely off grid and live off grid. So there's gonna be definitely a market segment for that. On the Navajo Nation, I'm gonna guess half of the homes that we supply for them will need to be off grid because they just don't have the utilities to their land. So that's gonna be a big part of that. Today, probably half of our units are leaving the factory with solar. as an option on the homes. So maybe long term, it'll be half the units that will want to have a completely self-contained solution. And you've just made it

Brian Sheng:
Mm.

Bob Worsley:
super easy for us to make water, check the box that here's water for $1,000. You can get the water you need for a lighter use, one or two people kind of opportunity. Somebody's asking us here, are your devices regulated by any government agency? Is there any kind of regulation, UL approval or something that's needed?

Brian Sheng:
Yeah, so for atmospheric water generation as an industry, it's very new and organization like ANSI are just starting to come out with some initial, I wouldn't even really call it regulation, but at least some frameworks around this technology. The short answer is atmospheric water generation products are not regulated. However, since our product is potable water, We do extensive testing in locations that we operate in. So water quality reports that are achieving either EPA standards or WHO drinking water standards. And we do that tests in many different locations. Like we have reports from. LA, Dubai, Singapore, South Africa, different places, you know, Bangkok. We do testing all different sorts of locations to understand variances in water and how that relates to variances in air quality, for example. And so that's why we do testing in a lot of different locations. So I would say that if there was a regulatory body that's relevant to us, it's really EPA or WHO drinking water standards and making sure that the water we produce is according to that. Otherwise, we've even tried to go for, let's say, Energy Star ratings. We don't fall under a category. There's no category for Energy Star for atmospheric water generation and other bodies. It doesn't currently exist, but we're trying to push the boundaries and try to get as much as relevant or proxy water quality that's important to us results.

Bob Worsley:
Great, there's a couple other really good questions I missed. Is it a 110 volt for the unit behind you, or is that a 220 to 240 volt? What kind of? Go ahead.

Brian Sheng:
This is a one symbol event.

Bob Worsley:
Great, super. So it plugs in like any appliance, a microwave, or anything else in your kitchen.

Brian Sheng:
Yes, correct.

Bob Worsley:
Excellent, excellent. Another question that I've seen here is. One gentleman, John, said, this seems to be one of the most revolutionary developments in human history. How will this improve over time?

Brian Sheng:
Absolutely. So I think I can draw a parallel to solar technology here. Solar has

Bob Worsley:
Mm-hmm.

Brian Sheng:
been well researched over the past 30 years, I think since Bell Labs and only recently over the past couple of years has it become more affordable to open up. a new solar production, energy production plant versus even burning coal or opening of a new coal plant. So there has been a tipping point where it's actually more economically affordable to be sustainable and green than it is to use the alternative. Of course, there are still other challenges with solar, but that's a crucial tipping point where it's more affordable to be green and sustainable than it is to use some other more carbon intensive option. So while we have done a critical step in doing the R&D and creating a career as current technology, our holy grail as an atmospheric water technology is when we can create water cheaper than tap water, where we can create water from the air cheaper than it is to get water from the ground. Or even if we're close, even if we're let's say with it, so right now we're still probably, I would say maybe depending on where you are, maybe five to seven, eight times more expensive than getting water from your tap. So if you had tap water and that was high quality, this is more like a... Apple product to you. But really we're serving the needs of people that have water access issues today, which is already lots and lots of people and that's why we're here talking about it today. But in the future, actually not even in the future, today some of the R&D that we're doing at Aquaria, for example, is looking at, for example, integration with hydrogen technology, being able to produce water from the air using hydrogen and then also in down times, be able to create more hydrogen to power ourselves. through electrolysis to become more energy self-sufficient so that we're using our own energy to produce more water. Again, the different methods all come down to one thing. How can we produce more clean water more affordably? And that's really the future for this whole technology category.

Bob Worsley:
Great, very visionary. Thank you. So let's just think big picture. I know when wind turbines came along, people said, here's this resource that's kind of flying through the air, literally wind, and we're going to harvest that and turn it into electricity to power our homes. And then people started looking at bird kill. Oh my gosh, the turbines make a little bit of a swoosh noise. Is there something bad for humans? Some questions I've heard about atmospheric water harvesting is if we remove all this humidity from the air, what's the negative on that? Does the house, does your home feel a little bit more, because air conditioning has already been doing this to some extent versus swamp cooling of your home. So what are some of the negatives that we have to be just on the lookout for as we remove humidity from air?

Brian Sheng:
Sure. So because water from air is water from the air, so we do definitely, if you're in an enclosed space, a very small enclosed space, then we would be, you would have the humidity decrease in that area. So. When you use our machines, this is part of using the machine is that you should have airflow in the area. So for example, you shouldn't put the machine, let's say in your bathroom, where there's maybe 10 square feet, 30 square feet, whatever of space, and that's the only place it might be in, versus being in your living room where there's more open space. You should put in your living room where there's more open space because you need more airflow for the product in order to create that. will create that water. And if you put it in too tight of a space, it's very noticeable that you have a decrease in the humidity of the air. So, and that for some people could become a little bit uncomfortable. That definitely is something to... You know, notice, I mean, I live in LA. This is my living room. It's creating water. So I want to mention that, but it's not super exaggerated since LA is not exactly the most humid place either. It's still quite dry in LA. So I feel no problem. Actually, I have two of these in my living room. I don't have one. because my family lives here, so we need a couple of us, so we need more than one machine here. But that's definitely something to be mindful of, is to understand where you place the machine, can it have an effect on the comfort, based on the humidity of the location.

Bob Worsley:
And Brian, would you say that you don't notice it? They're there, but you don't notice any difference in terms of living condition. Your skin's not

Brian Sheng:
Uh

Bob Worsley:
more dry. Go ahead.

Brian Sheng:
So, yes and no. I have to be honest. I've had this, I've put this in my room before, and in my room is not that large of a space. In LA, I don't notice this at all when I'm in Texas or

Bob Worsley:
Mm-hmm.

Brian Sheng:
in Florida, for example, but since LA has already quite tried to begin with, there are times that I do notice it when I'm in... in my room, I put it in my room. This is why I mentioned a living room because in the living room, there's more open space and that's not really as much of an issue. I definitely do not recommend putting the machine like right next to your bed, for example, in a very enclosed space when it's very dry. This is all related to the humidity on a while is we consider to be, we think it's super revolutionary. There are definitely some things that's related to the fact that we're pulling moisture from the air. So. That's, it really isn't noticeable for me in the living room. It is in a dry place in my room. So

Bob Worsley:
Got

Brian Sheng:
that's

Bob Worsley:
it.

Brian Sheng:
something that I, you know, I shy away from.

Bob Worsley:
And I'm just thinking outside, I think they're just, to your point, when we first started, there's so much air, so much moisture in the air that we're not going to suck too much of that moisture out of the air. How many times more than what we need, did you say, was in the air? You did some math there that was pretty fancy.

Brian Sheng:
So that is a very common question Bob I get is if we deploy so many atmospheric water generators, can we suck the air dry? So the calculation I did before was that if everybody on Earth used as much water as Americans did, a lot of other countries definitely don't have water as much as we do, but if everybody on earth, 8 billion people did, we would only be using 0.025% of the available water. And I'm happy for anyone who's watching the audience to fact check me on this. But this is really the math behind it. Obviously, humidity varies based on climate patterns. Your humidity in Florida is not the same as humidity in Phoenix or in LA. But generally speaking, Even if you use all of that, it would only be 0.025% of the available water in the air, just in the air. And if we remember back to earth science, the earth's natural hydrologic cycle, about every week or so, seven to nine days, all of the water on earth gets replenished through just... rain evaporation and in the process of the Earth's natural cycle. So that 0.025 number is not like we're using it and then we're depleting it. It's just using it at that particular point in time if all 8 billion people drew 100 gallons a day, but that's getting replenished every second through the cycle. So that is not an issue.

Bob Worsley:
And Brian, I love that you've done your math on this because you can see some crazy people saying, oh, you're gonna change the climate, you know, type of thing. So you have Earth doing this every week or so, all the moisture is replaced in the air, and we're taking out a tiny, tiny.025% of the water. the humidity in the air if everyone on Earth was using 100 gallons per day of water from the atmosphere. So what it comes down to, in my opinion, is humanity is always settled on a lake or on a river, you know, before we could really drill deeply in the ground and get groundwater, fossil water out of the ground to use for drinking. That's the travesty. In Arizona, for example, our groundwater. took thousands of years to store in fossil deposits of fresh water. And we're taking it out in a decade or two. And so you just think about it from an earth perspective, we are completely depleting these stores of water in the ground, where if we took your approach, every seven days, you're replant, earth is replenishing the air with humidity. And if we took the humidity from the air to live with, we would be in complete harmony with Mother Earth. So I'm a big fan here today to say, Arizona, start harvesting, California, Southern California especially, it is dry, but let's start taking more of the water from the air that the ocean's kind of helping us put back into the air, and let's stop taking water out of the ground. which took thousands and thousands of years to put there at the levels that we have been using that could literally deplete that in just a few years. There's another couple of questions here. Let's hit them with that. So we talked about how much they cost. You have a customer that said that your unit works great. You said you were very helpful in getting your system delivered, installed, and working. So there's a happy customer that's commented here.

Brian Sheng:
Oh, right. Thank you very much.

Bob Worsley:
And then what happens when your unit's running when you're not home? Do you have some, how much water can you store in the unit? And what happens if it's generating water while you're away from home for a while?

Brian Sheng:
Sure.

Bob Worsley:
How does that work?

Brian Sheng:
So this unit behind me right now, it's full. I haven't drank water today. Actually a little thirsty, but right now, if you see, I can actually turn this machine a little bit around, but on the side of it, there's, on the side of it, this is the water tank. And so we store six liters of water in the water tank. And right now the machine is actually just off because it doesn't need to produce any more water because it's completely full. It will start making water again once I get a whole glass of water here, but essentially it controls itself. Once it's full, it stops producing water. And then once it gets to a certain level in the water tank, then it will start producing water again. And then it will stop again when you're not using it. Sorry, when it gets full again. However, I do have to mention that because the water is constantly filtered again. we have to make sure the water is high quality. So the water is consistently being disinfected through UVC and filter through the machine to make sure that it's high quality. When you have water just sitting dead in a tank and not moving, that's when bacteria and other types of contamination occur. So when you're away from home, you still leave it plugged in. It just cycles itself. It won't be making water because it will be full, but you leave it plugged in and it will cycle itself every three to four hours. And so that, You don't have to worry about it. The only thing you shouldn't do is turn the water off.

Bob Worsley:
Okay, so when you say recycle every three or four hours, what's it doing? What's the mechanically is that tank of six liters of water doing during that recycling process?

Brian Sheng:
Sure, so the UVC light will turn on in the tank and UVC

Bob Worsley:
Oh.

Brian Sheng:
is for disinfection. And then apart from that, the water actually runs again, circulates through the treatment system again to make sure that it's flowing and then maintaining that quality. So that's what I mean by dead water versus moving around circulating, is that it's obviously most of the energy is consumed in actually producing the water. So not a lot of electricity is consumed. It just runs itself through once every couple hours.

Bob Worsley:
Great. So I have Tim asking us who your industry competitors are. And I think I mentioned before the show that we had worked with and talked to zero mass source out of it's an ASU spin out. So Brian, tell us what the industry is doing.

Brian Sheng:
The industry is very nascent, I would say, that there's maybe half a dozen companies that are tackling this challenge of water access through the air globally. Maybe now we have maybe a dozen companies or more. So it's definitely quite a nascent industry. I would say some of the more prominent companies, one would be sourcing zero mass water in the US. One might be a company called Watergren out of Israel, but there is very few companies that are working on atmospheric water. And to be honest, I think

Bob Worsley:
Yes,

Brian Sheng:
that's a

Bob Worsley:
uh-huh,

Brian Sheng:
problem.

Bob Worsley:
uh-huh.

Brian Sheng:
Problem, that's a huge problem.

Bob Worsley:
We need more

Brian Sheng:
I wish

Bob Worsley:
companies.

Brian Sheng:
there were way more companies. I think there's like 5,700 solar companies in California alone.

Bob Worsley:
Uh huh, uh huh, wow.

Brian Sheng:
So, yeah, so it's kind of crazy. But those would be some of the other competitors that are, I would say competitors in the sense that they also are in the business of making water from the air. But I don't think they're competitors because in this industry, we need way more companies addressing water and two, we're also creating water in different ways. So, you know, for example, we make water how we make water and what we focus on is very different from how source and zero mass create water.

Bob Worsley:
What would be the difference, Brian, how they do it and how you do it?

Brian Sheng:
Sure. So, Sourcewater, for example, focuses on energy and water in one product. Their hydropanel is at once both an atmospheric water generator and also a solar panel. So, they are a self-contained unit that, well, it powers itself. The great part about that is obviously it's powers itself and it's a self-contained unit. And so once you've deployed it, it's supposed to run well by itself. For us, we chose a different approach where we said, we are agnostic to the energy source. We can plug it to the grid. We can plug it to solar. We're not the solar experts. We are not the battery experts. And we're also looking into hydrogen production, although that we're actually looking into developing our own technology around it. But our expertise is in, we want to focus on large volume and low cost water production, regardless of how the energy comes to us. And so if you look at a source unit, we need the energy versus source does not need the energy, but for a unit of the same size, given that energy is provided, we can probably produce 50 to 100 times more water, given that space constraint. But we still need energy versus sources product does not need energy as long as the sun is shining, their product would produce water. So that's what I mean. There's a lot more R&D needed in the industry because different, just like wind turbines, in other technology, there are certain places, one product works better than the others. And for us, we chose to be agnostic of an energy source, but to focus on high volume production and low cost production.

Bob Worsley:
Great. There's two other quick questions before our time is up, Brian. Someone

Brian Sheng:
Okay?

Bob Worsley:
asked me, are battery storage units, we have a 10 KW system panels on the roof and an inverter, but if you add the battery, the battery's about another five or $6,000 for 10 kilowatt hours of lithium ion battery storage. There's another question for you that people are asking, how does Aquaria address air pollution? So interesting question.

Brian Sheng:
Yeah, so our machine doesn't just have water purification. It also has air purification. So we have HIPAA air filters on the back of the machine. So actually the first thing that our machine does when it draws the air in is to first clean the air. So the first thing we do is make sure that VOCs, particular matters, pollen, any of the, we have to make sure that air is cleaned first. And so... Actually, let me see if we can view it. I'll turn the machine around a little bit so people can see it. But on the back of the aquarium machine, this is the first pass. You have to go, the air gets drawn in and the air itself is actually purified first before then it goes into the inside of the machine and the water gets purified. So it's a multi-step process to make sure that the source gets cleaned before it's made into water. Now, this goes back to my answer before, this is where the air quality matters. And we've taken off some air filters where it's quite

Bob Worsley:
Nasty.

Brian Sheng:
in bad shape because of the quality of the air that the machine is working in, because our customer asked, we've got the machine for like three weeks and it stopped working. Why? We're like, look, that shouldn't happen. And then... And then we said, well, why don't you take out the air filter and see how it looks? And it was quite in bad shape. It was completely clogged and no air was even getting through anymore because it was just so, so clogged. And so that's, that's what happens with the air filtration.

Bob Worsley:
That's great. We could get into COVID and taking all of the things out of the air, but I think right now, that's a good secondary benefit of what you're doing, cleaning up the air in your home. Great. Do you have any final comments, Brian? It looks like we're right at our time to end.

Brian Sheng:
Well, I guess my final comment is I'm super excited to explore really, I really explore how to partner with Zeni Homes to put our water unit and become a water source, whether standalone or actually become an SDK in the Zeni Home factory to provide water for your customers. And then really... Also want to dig into some of the really interesting opportunities on Navajo Nation. I think that's Two Birds of One Stone providing a great technology product, but also solving a huge problem for the community there. Yeah, so super excited to see if we can collaborate and really bring the whole solution to the people.

Bob Worsley:
Thank you, Brian. Really been a pleasure. And it's given a whole new opportunity to us looking at this planet-wise, how we can provide people that don't have, in a remote location, don't have water, don't have internet, do not have sewer facilities, and do not have electricity. And we would love to be able to have all of that wrapped up together in a package in the factory, so when it comes to your site. You can live a normal modern lifestyle with all the conveniences of being in the middle of a city, with all of the utilities being brought to your lot and to your home. So thank you, Brian. Very interesting and I'm really glad that during COVID you got after this. I understand you said this was a thesis when you were going to college. You were working on this idea. Let's just let you wrap up on how did you come up with the idea to start this company.

Brian Sheng:
Yeah, so prior to founding Aquaria, I was actually a Frontier Tech venture capital investor for about a decade. But when I was thinking about my next career move and newest innovation I wanted to work on during COVID, I went back to... something I did in my past life, my senior thesis research at Princeton was on atmospheric water generation and its potential to address the water crisis. So I turned that thesis research angle into a query and put my head down for two years and now we're coming to market and hoping to democratize access to clean water.

Bob Worsley:
Brian, I want a copy of your thesis. If you want to send it over, I would love to read it. And let's just,

Brian Sheng:
happens.

Bob Worsley:
we'll start thinking big picture how we're going to solve this world's problem. Thank you very much for joining us today and looking forward to it. And hope everyone enjoyed this informative webinar today. Thank you.

Brian Sheng:
Thank you so much.

Bob Worsley:
Yep, it takes a nice shareholder group for both of us to thrive and appreciate those who want to become part of our community or part of Brian's or both. Why not solve, why not invest a little bit on WeFunder to solve housing, affordable housing and getting potable clean water for every single person on the planet. Thank you so much. See you soon. Bye-bye.

Brian Sheng:
Thank you everyone.