Harvesting Clean Water from Air.
But existing technologies generally require high moisture and a lot of electricity, which is expensive and often unavailable.
The team intends for its technology to overcome a notable problem with most materials capable of absorbing water from the atmosphere (such as the zeolites in humidifiers): aside from needing high humidity, they give up the trapped water only when heated substantially, which takes energy.
Berkeley group.
Beyond their versatility, MOFs’ great promise lies with their phenomenally large pores: the surface area inside is almost 10 times that of porous zeolites.
Taking a different tack, a start-up called Zero Mass Water in Scottsdale, Ariz., has begun selling a solar-based system that does not have to be hooked up to an electric grid or an existing water system.
A solar panel provides energy that both drives air through a proprietary water-absorbing material and powers condensation of the extracted moisture into fluid.
Cody Friesen, founder of Zero Mass Water and a materials scientist at Arizona State University, developed the system with the aim of having it work sustainably and easily anywhere in the world.
When most people think about solar, he adds, “they think about electricity.
Carbeck serves on the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Advanced Materials.

Harvesting Clean Water from Air.
But existing technologies generally require high moisture and a lot of electricity, which is expensive and often unavailable.
The team intends for its technology to overcome a notable problem with most materials capable of absorbing water from the atmosphere (such as the zeolites in humidifiers): aside from needing high humidity, they give up the trapped water only when heated substantially, which takes energy.
Berkeley group.
Beyond their versatility, MOFs’ great promise lies with their phenomenally large pores: the surface area inside is almost 10 times that of porous zeolites.
Taking a different tack, a start-up called Zero Mass Water in Scottsdale, Ariz., has begun selling a solar-based system that does not have to be hooked up to an electric grid or an existing water system.
A solar panel provides energy that both drives air through a proprietary water-absorbing material and powers condensation of the extracted moisture into fluid.
Cody Friesen, founder of Zero Mass Water and a materials scientist at Arizona State University, developed the system with the aim of having it work sustainably and easily anywhere in the world.
When most people think about solar, he adds, “they think about electricity.
Carbeck serves on the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Advanced Materials.

Solar power devices are now capable to extract water out of air.
These devices work on a novel kind of material which could extract a large volume of water into its various number of pores.
A report during the last year in Science Advances had found that nearly four billion residents, almost half in India as well as in China, face “severe water scarcity at least during one month of the year.” This means that water shortages have affected about two-thirds of the world’s growing population.
These shortages—and conflicts are only expected to get more popular in large parts of the globe as the climatic changes accelerate.
A team at MIT has developed the technology working in Omar Yaghi’s laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley.
These devices have components which promise a class of synthetic porous materials also known as metal-organic frameworks and are composed of organic molecules attached along with the metal atoms, which Yaghi developed.
The material consists of a massive area of the surface, in order of a football field per gram, allowing it to connect with large quantities of particles.
I call it personalised water,” he said.
The new system is composed of dust-sized MOF particles which are compressed between a solar absorber and a condenser plate, which is placed inside a chamber which is left open to the air.
The older water-harvesting technologies have been made limited to the areas having fog or other high-moisture conditions.

Scientists Turn Air Into Drinking Water With Device Powered Solely by Sunlight.
Scientists have created a device that can pull drinking water from the air using only the power of sunlight.
That could change the lives of the 4 billion people around the globe who lack access to safe drinking warer for at least one month per year.
The technology is based on a material called a metal-organic framework (MOF), first developed by Yaghi more than 20 years ago.
Recently, he and Wang, a mechanical engineer, teamed up to develop an MOF device that could collect water.
This was in conditions with just 20 to 30 percent humidity.
Wang tells Newsweek that at the moment, the device is not viable as a commercial product.
We can then think about clever designs of how to stack these layers into the system by which you can enhance the transportation of the vapor molecules and the production of the water.” The plan is to create a 30-liter system, about the size of a carry-on suitcase, which would be able to provide drinking water for a family of four each day.
Certainly, there are many techniques for capturing water at high humidity but all those don’t work at low humidity as this MOF device does.
“This is the first material and device capable of water capture and delivery under such conditions, making it potentially possible to water those areas where water is scarce.

They hope that a version of the technology could eventually supply clean drinking water in some the driest and poorest parts of the globe.
The device is based on a novel material that can pull large amounts of water into its many pores.
A report last year in Science Advances found that four billion people, nearly half in India and China, face “severe water scarcity at least one month of the year.” That means water shortages affect two-thirds of the world’s population.
The size and chemical character of the material’s pores can be customized to capture particular types of molecules or allow them to flow through.
The material also has a massive surface area, on the order of a football field per gram, enabling it to bond with a large quantity of particles.
In this case, the scientists employed a previously developed version of the material that Yaghi optimized to efficiently capture water molecules.
But during the day, sunlight hitting the material adds enough energy to convert the water molecules into vapor.
Though they plan to continue refining the technology, they’re “not that far away” from a viable product, says Evelyn Wang, head of MIT’s device research laboratory.
Could this technology make a real difference in some of the driest parts of the world?
But the big hope, he says, is that these devices could become household fixtures in poorer parts of the world.