Company capitalizes on Florida humidity, converting it to drinkable water

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (FOX 13) - Bare store shelves often mean a big storm is coming. They can also mean drinking water is more valuable than ever. A company in South Florida says the answer is in the air.

Doug Marcille is the founder of Atmospheric Water Solutions in Broward County. The company's machine, the AquaBoy, creates water by grabbing it out of the air.

Air is first pulled through a filter and then touches cold condensation coils, where it becomes liquid.

"It collects into a collection tray and goes into a collection tank with an ultraviolet bulb in it to make sure it's sanitized," Marcille described.

He promises the water is as clean as it looks.

"What comes out is really the best-tasting purified water available in the world," he said.

The AquaBoy can produce five gallons of water a day, as long as the humidity is at least 60 percent. Marcille says it's perfect in a pinch, whether there is a storm or not.

"What you could do is take storage containers, wait till it's full, drain it into containers. You could end up with 30, 40, 50 gallons of water that you could use in an extended period of time."

He hopes, for the business' sake and ours, the technology is the first step in solving some of the world's toughest problems.

It doesn't seem far-fetched considering they're tapping into an unlimited resource: Florida's famous humidity.

"We have 37.5 [million-billion] gallons of water in the atmosphere. That's a lot of zeros. We are not going to run out of water in the air," added Marcille.