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news
Fontus (credit Kristof Retezár)Self-filling water bottle could help cyclists - and people living in places without fresh water
A designer from Austria is hoping to win a James Dyson Award for his invention of a water bottle that refills itself.
While the invention could interest cyclists riding across continents or around the world, ensuring them a fresh supply of hydration, its primary use could come in regions where fresh water is hard to come by.
Kristof Retezár’s Fontus system attaches to the frame of a bicycle, and while it is moving, enables air to be funnelled over what is described as a “condensing structure,” reports the website City Lab.
The air is then turned into moisture through a “condensing structure,” which drips into a detachable PET bottle. It works best in humid, warm conditions, picked out in a darker shade of red in the map below.
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Retezár says: “Fontus can be applied in two different areas. Firstly, it may be interpreted as a sporty bicycle accessory.
“Useful on long bike tours, the constant search for freshwater sources such as rivers and gas stations can cease to be an issue since the bottle automatically fills itself up.
“Secondly, it might be a clever way of acquiring freshwater in regions of the world where groundwater is scarce but humidity is high.
“Experiments suggest that the bottle could harvest around 0.5 L water in one hour's time in regions with high temperature and humidity values.”
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
Latest Comments
- Daclu Trelub 2 hours 53 min ago
That's just fucking outrageous.
- Barraob1 3 hours 2 min ago
You can hit something and have a loss of control and fall off. According to the article there was difference in height between the road surface and...
- Hirsute 3 hours 29 min ago
Double decker bus hits rail bridge - trains replaced with bus service. https://www.gazette-news.co.uk/news/24843532.police-update-bus-hits-brid...
- chrisonabike 2 hours 9 min ago
Not fair - I think it's just a misquotation from "1984 On Wheels" EDIT "Animal Farm On Wheels" obvs... - "Two wheels good, four wheels better!"...
- Daclu Trelub 3 hours 44 min ago
Great stuff, the BBC is simutaneously pissing off the Left and the Right. Doing its job properly.
- pait 4 hours 38 min ago
I used a Carradice saddle bag plus a full frame bag from Rogue Panda on a weeklong trip last year. Having only one of them would have made the trip...
- don simon fbpe 5 hours 25 min ago
Right whingers gonna whinge!
- bobrayner 5 hours 48 min ago
This is an article about exciting bikes for 2025...? If you want an article about exciting steel bikes in particular, I'm sure there's one from 1995.
- TheHungryGhost 6 hours 27 min ago
It was on Reporting Scotland - The BBC One Scotland news that comes on after the News at 6
- Backladder 7 hours 59 min ago
So it is only universal to the frames that are designed to work with it?
Add new comment
4 comments
It also seems a little risky to rely on there being sufficient humidity to enable water to be collected. I wouldn't want to set off anywhere hostile with just a condenser so it's out of the game immediately as you would still (minor pun, there)need back-up if it couldn't keep up with the rate of evaporation from the body.
Round here we have bottles of what looks and tastes like Irn Bru left by concerned motorists at the side of the road. Saved my life more than once...
Well it interested me.
More so than Bono falling off a bike in a park....
I'd also want to see how it copes with dusty conditions, which are also often found in those areas on the map. A condensing structure is likely to have lots of fine fins or coils, to increase surface area, which would also get very quickly clogged with sand or dust.
I'm not sure this is newsworthy unless we have a quote from someone other than the designer to say it's likely to work better in some way than other fresh water systems.
I also don't see how it can be used two ways - if you have to cycle for an hour to generate 0.5 L of water it doesn't seem like a " clever way of acquiring freshwater " for people who don't have other reasons for cycling.
To clarify how it works, there's a solar panel which is used to power an electronic fridge (apparently based on the peltier effect), which keeps the condensing structure cold. This isn't a novel idea, so the question is whether this is a better application of it.