MIT Device Successfully Harvests Water from Desert Air

Megalith

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Last year, MIT researchers alluded to a device that would be capable of extracting moisture from very dry air. While scaling and efficiency remains an issue, field tests conducted this week prove that the device is indeed capable of creating drinkable water out of desert air. It has no moving parts and is powered passively with sunlight.

The system, based on relatively new high-surface-area materials called metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), can extract potable water from even the driest of desert air, the researchers say, with relative humidities as low as 10 percent. Current methods for extracting water from air require much higher levels – 100 percent humidity for fog-harvesting methods, and above 50 percent for dew-harvesting refrigeration-based systems.
 
It's interesting and I assume ease of setup/speed is a selling point.

Just remember if you're stranded in the desert, you can extract water using a "solar still." It's a hole, some plastic and something to catch the water. Slow, but could mean the difference between dehydration and life.
 
this is very interesting. If you could harness the heat given from solar panels you could essentially collect more water in theory. And with having power generation and ability to collect water you could self sustain for desert living. Anyone selling cheap nowhere parcels of land for sale?
 
NIVO said:
this is very interesting. If you could harness the heat given from solar panels you could essentially collect more water in theory. And with having power generation and ability to collect water you could self sustain for desert living. Anyone selling cheap nowhere parcels of land for sale?
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Or just use a giant mirror to heat a metal plates.
 
Great now they will be able to suck moisture out of the air and whatever natural ecosystem that actually relies on that minuscule amount water won't have it all so humans can really populate areas which should not be populated by humans.
 
NIVO said:
this is very interesting. If you could harness the heat given from solar panels you could essentially collect more water in theory. And with having power generation and ability to collect water you could self sustain for desert living. Anyone selling cheap nowhere parcels of land for sale?
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Depends on the quantity of water available. I have a suspician it's not very much water, as suprise! There isn't much water in the air to extract
 
cdabc123 said:
Depends on the quantity of water available. I have a suspician it's not very much water, as suprise! There isn't much water in the air to extract
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Yeah I've never seen these able to extract much more than needed drinking water, though several companies are working on it. What's interesting about this is usually they are only practical in more humid areas (I read about one recently that works down to about 30%). Still if they really want to impress me, try the Sierra Nv mountains in summer, humidity is frequently below 5% often 1% or lower...10%? that sounds pretty humid to me :) .

But they are talking scaling it up. I have no idea how much the MOF material costs though.
"if scaled up its output would be equivalent to more than a quarter-liter of water per day per kilogram of MOF, the researchers say. With an optimal material choice, output can be as high as three times that of the current version"
And any heat will work, so if the sun isn't shining you can use other heat source. Interesting but will it be practical?

Edit: MOF means Metal Organic Framework. And they say there are 20,000 varities to choose from which is why they think they can imrove upon what they used in their experiment. But no mention of cost.

"Tests showed that one kilogram (just over two pounds) of the material could collect about three quarts of fresh water per day, about enough to supply drinking water for one person, from very dry air with a humidity of just 20 percent. Such systems would only require attention a few times a day to collect the water, open the device to let in fresh air, and begin the next cycle.

What’s more, MOFs can be made by combining many different metals with any of hundreds of organic compounds, yielding a virtually limitless variety of different compositions, which can be “tuned” to meet a particular need. So far more than 20,000 varieties of MOFs have been made."
 
Sounds to me like the MOF is good at adsorbing moisture, so they need to bake it out at sunset. That would require energy storage. Solar and wind also need energy storage. We need MORE advances in energy storage.

Still would be kind of cool, on a small scale, for watering plants. And you have to wonder how much impact that has on the area with larger scale production though.
 
Thease numbers still seam off though. I had a thermo electric cooled rig that had a nastey habit of cycling below ambiant and createing a puddle by the CPU. This is at 25% humidity in Denver and I wasn't even trying for it to happen
 
Poseur said:
Sounds to me like the MOF is good at adsorbing moisture, so they need to bake it out at sunset. That would require energy storage. Solar and wind also need energy storage. We need MORE advances in energy storage.

Still would be kind of cool, on a small scale, for watering plants. And you have to wonder how much impact that has on the area with larger scale production though.
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well plants transpire through their leaves, so im not sure how lowering the humidity but watering them more would work out.
 
Time2Kill said:
I didn't know you had a dehumidifier with zero moving parts and ran on sunlight? Where can I buy such a machine?
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You mean one of these?
solar-still-plastic.jpg


Or are we talking about a Peltier connected to a solar panel?

Edit: b10
 
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excellent news. If the drought continues here in New Mexico we're gonna need that device. But since desert air is so dry (very low humidity) I'm not sure how much water they plan to harvest
 
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