A new water harvesting device from MIT has the ability to extract fresh water from the air to meet the daily needs of multiple people, even in regions facing water scarcity. This innovative design features a series of vertical fins spaced 2 mm apart, maximizing the surface area exposed to the air. These fins are made of copper sheets embedded in copper foams and coated with a specialized zeolite material known for its water adsorption properties.
Once the fins become saturated with water after an hour, the copper sheets are heated to release the extracted moisture. When this cycle is repeated 24 times a day in arid air conditions with 30% humidity, the water harvester is estimated to produce up to 1.3 L of potable water per day per liter of the adsorbent coating used. When scaled up, this translates to 5.8 L per kilogram of material used daily, which is sufficient to cater to the daily water requirements of multiple individuals.
One limitation of this system is that it requires energy to release the collected water, with the base of the device needing to reach 184 °C to do so. However, researchers suggest that waste energy or heat from other sources could be utilized to power this process. The findings of this study were published in the journal ACS Energy Letters, highlighting the potential of this innovative technology for addressing global water shortages.
This new design offers several advantages over other systems under development. It has a higher water collection capacity compared to many other systems, with some devices only capable of retrieving 100 ml of water per kg of material. Although a previous design from Johns Hopkins University boasted an impressive output of 8.66 L per day per kg
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