Solar Powered Condenser Turns Ambient Humidity into Drinking Water.
MIT and UC-Berkeley Scientists recently demonstrated a new device designed to collect water straight from ambient air using only solar power.
This water harvester can even pull moisture in desert climates where humidity is as low as 20 percent.
At any moment, it’s estimated that atmosphere contains about 3,100 cubic miles of water vapor, which is enough to cover the entire surface of the Earth with one inch of water if it fell all at once.
In addition to its most visible form, clouds, atmospheric water is also present in clear air and the entire system is recycled every nine days.
Solar Powered Condenser; Off-Grid Water Harvester Researchers at MIT, in collaboration with the University of California Berkeley, have developed a prototype for a device that pulls water from clear air using solar power.
The device, reported in the journal Science, is an open air chamber containing a lattice-like structure made from a metal-organic framework (MOF), produced at the UC-Berkeley.
By the same year, two-thirds of the global population could be living under water-stressed conditions.
Developing solutions to sanitize water and produce it where it is scarce is a major challenge for many countries.
And there’s no resource more accessible than ambient air.