Scientists achieve breakthrough that may revolutionize access to clean water: 'A significant step toward providing new r

[Judi Lynn]

Scientists achieve breakthrough that may revolutionize access to clean water: 'A significant step toward providing new resources and possibilities'

Noah Jampol
Fri, November 22, 2024 at 4:45 AM CST
3 min read

Scientists recently achieved a breakthrough in atmospheric water harvesting that they say could generate a gallon of water per day from dry Las Vegas air using nothing more than a square meter — about 3 square feet — of space. In more humid places, they say they could create a remarkable three times more.

"This whole idea seemed like science fiction, but this is possible, and we're actually doing it," said UNLV mechanical engineering professor H. Jeremy Cho, the research team leader, in a news release.

The journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published the study. The researchers called it "a significant step toward providing new resources and possibilities to water-scarce regions."

The problem the researchers aim to address is an ongoing megadrought in the Southwest that threatens the water supply. Their goal was to create a system to transform water vapor in the air into a usable form of water even in low-humidity environments.

More:
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/scientists-achieve-breakthrough-may-revolutionize-104500403.html

[Lovie777]

1. K & R.....

[lark]

2. Awesome news, the world is going to need this as it continues to heat up!

Love our good scientists!

[Woodwizard]

3. 1 square meter

Is a little over 10 sq feet. About a 38x38 inch square.

[Goatguy]

4. My window air conditioner

Can produce 3 gallons of water a day. In the spring. I save and put in water barrel for watering garden or flushing toilets when our rural water district is fixing stuff which is often.

[in2herbs]

5. Why don't they implement this technology in Africa where people are hungry because

there's no water to grow crops ---- so to feed the people they're going to KILL 200 ELEPHANTS to feed the people.

[BadgerKid]

6. Aha! A moisture vaporator.

[Farmer-Rick]

7. Wow,

Here in East TN humidity levels easily reach 70% or higher during summer. Imagine all the water they could get from that.

That's why it always amazes me when there are wildfires around here. But as a firefighter once explained to me, the fires are usually in, or start in, the higher elevations which have way less humidity.

[Prairie_Seagull]

8. Needs more looking into by me but sounds like a

a good investment opportunity.

Enter disclaimer here.

[GreenWave]

9. Once again, science to the rescue!

Hooray for applying intelligence to a big problem!

[SpankMe]

10. The article is weak

It doesn't describe what the system looks like, how it works or what a deployment would look like. It mentions a "hydrogel" membrane, but doesn't say what exactly this is or how it works.

Click through to the UNLV news release, which is just as vague, then at the bottom of that you click through to the "research article" at the PNAS web site.

[airplaneman]

11. The Moisture Vaporator. N/T.

[hunter]

12. Link to the actual science...

Last edited Sat Nov 23, 2024, 02:01 AM - Edit history (1)

Significance

A layered, convection-limited atmospheric water capture approach is demonstrated, providing water in liquid form at extremely high rates even in low humidities. Inspired by tree frog skins and air plant cuticles, a thin, strong hydrogel acting as a membrane facilitates the transport of water from ambient air into a liquid desiccant for storage. Water in this liquid form is an important precursor for further distillation into drinking water or electrolytic processing for green hydrogen production—enabling new capabilities in arid regions. In addition, pure water can be released from the liquid desiccant using solar energy. Both water capture and release can occur simultaneously, maximizing the potential to harvest water.

Abstract

Transforming atmospheric water vapor into liquid form can be a way to supply water to arid regions for uses such as drinking water, thermal management, and hydrogen generation. Many current methods rely on solid sorbents that cycle between capture and release at slow rates. We envision a radically different approach where water is transformed and directly captured into a liquid salt solution that is suitable for subsequent distillation or other processing using existing methods. In contrast to other methods utilizing hydrogels as sorbents, we do not store water within hydrogels—we use them as a transport medium. Inspired by nature, we capture atmospheric water through a hydrogel membrane “skin” at an extraordinarily high rate of 5.50 kgm ^-2 d ^-1 at a low humidity of 35%. and up to 16.9 kgm ^-2 d ^-1 at higher humidities. For a drinking-water application, calculated performance of a hypothetical one-square-meter device shows that water could be supplied to two to three people in arid environments. This work is a significant step toward providing new resources and possibilities to water-scarce regions.

-- more --

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2321429121

Most people don't understand the scale of urban water use.

This sounds to me like something that might be useful to people willing to use composting toilets and take sponge baths no more than once a week. Forget showering, forget "spring fresh" clothing.

If the natural environment truly turns to shit because of global warming and our technological civilization survives in spite of that, then it's conceivable that desalinated water from the ocean could be delivered in large volumes to cities like Phoenix or Las Vegas and life would go on as usual, but with much higher water and air conditioning bills and little use for this "breakthrough."

Higher elevation cities may be out of luck if there is no affordable water, and life will not go on as usual. I suspect people will simply leave rather than adopt the ultra low water use lifestyles this technology might enable.