Photo: Sime Basioli | Unsplash
The idea of turning the air around us into drinking water is a marvel and getting a sustainable amount of it from low-humidity environments has been closer to science fiction than reality. As a megadrought stresses the water supply throughout the Southwest, revolutionary research out of University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) is answering this problem with a groundbreaking technology that pulls large amounts of water from the air in low humidity. UNLV professor H. Jeremy Cho leads a team of researchers with a radically different approach to transforming water vapor in the air into a usable form. “This paper really establishes that you can capture water at a very fast rate,” says Cho. “If I have one square meter, which is around three feet by three feet, we can generate about a gallon of water per day in Las Vegas, and up to three times more in humid environments.” This technology and approach has been tested outdoors in Las Vegas, and is effective down to 10% humidity. “This work represents a significant shift in atmospheric water harvesting, opening doors to continuous operation and new applications of water production,” says coauthor Sameer Rao, a University of Utah mechanical engineering professor. “These innovations are especially critical for the desert Southwest and its sustainability efforts.”
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