This Solar-Powered Tool Can Create Fresh Water Out of Thin Air.
In the future, every household will be able to produce nearly three liters of water daily from thin air using the solar-powered tool.
The solar-powered tool uses a special material called a metal-organic framework, which was developed in Omar Yaghi’s laboratory at the University of California Berkeley.
The researchers were able to create a solar-powered "sponge-like" device that can pull water from the air, according to a report from Science Magazine.
"This is a major breakthrough in the long-standing challenge of harvesting water from the air at low humidity," Yaghi, one of two senior authors, said.
"There is no other way to do that right now, except by using extra energy.
It was in 2014 that Yaghi crafted a metal-organic framework that binds water vapor, eventually teaming up with MIT’s Evelyn Wang and her team to develop a water-collecting system.
Wang’s team used a kilogram of the dust-sized metal-organic framework crystals in a thin sheet of porous copper metal, which was placed between a solar absorber and a condenser plate, then inside a chamber.
The vapor then condenses as liquid water.
"One vision for the future is to have water off-grid, where you have a device at home running on ambient solar for delivering water that satisfies the needs of a household," Yaghi added.