How It Works

A fan draws room air into the unit.

Room air is never completely dry. Mixed in with it is water in gas form, called water vapor. That's what "humidity" describes: how much vapor the air is carrying. On a muggy summer afternoon there's plenty of it. On a crisp winter day, a lot less.

Step one is simply moving that air. A fan draws room air into the unit, so a steady stream of vapor-carrying air keeps flowing toward the part that does the real work in step two.

The source is the air that's already in your room.

A chilled surface cools the air below its dew point, and the water vapor it carries condenses into droplets that are collected.

Warm air has room for more water vapor than cool air. Cool any air down far enough and it reaches its dew point: the temperature at which it's holding all the vapor it can. Cool it below that, and some of the vapor has to turn back into liquid water.

You've seen this happen. It's why a glass of ice water "sweats" on a warm day, and why the grass is wet with dew on a cool morning. That water isn't leaking from the glass or falling from the sky. It's condensing out of the air that touches the cold surface.

Inside a Vapor Optimizer, the air flows across a chilled surface that's kept colder than the air's dew point. Water vapor condenses into droplets on that surface, the droplets are collected, and the air moves on carrying less vapor than it came in with.

The collected water passes through WaterVO's optimization stages and is held in a reservoir, ready at the tap.

Once the droplets are collected, the water passes through WaterVO's optimization stages and then into a reservoir inside the unit.

From the reservoir, it's ready at the hot and cold taps whenever you want a glass. That's the whole journey: from vapor in your room's air to water in your glass.