Posted on 10/29/2024 10:43:41 AM PDT by Red Badger
An early prototype of an atmospheric water harvesting device from H. Jeremy Cho’s lab. Credit: Jeff Scheid/UNLV
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Researchers at UNLV have developed a groundbreaking technology that efficiently extracts large amounts of water from the air, even in extremely low-humidity conditions.
Inspired by natural processes observed in tree frogs and air plants, this technology utilizes a hydrogel membrane and can be powered by solar energy, offering a sustainable water source for arid regions.
Transforming Air Into Water
Turning the air around us into drinking water has long seemed like a marvel, closer to science fiction than reality—especially when it comes to capturing a sustainable amount from dry, low-humidity environments.
However, amid a worsening megadrought impacting water supplies across the Southwest, researchers at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) have developed a groundbreaking technology that can pull significant amounts of water from even arid air. Their findings were published on October 22 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Advancements in Atmospheric Water Harvesting
Leading this innovative project is UNLV mechanical engineering professor H. Jeremy Cho, who, along with his team, has introduced a fundamentally new approach to atmospheric water harvesting—transforming water vapor in the air into a usable form. Unlike existing technologies, which produce low yields and struggle below 30% humidity, this new method is designed to perform efficiently even in extremely dry conditions.
“This paper really establishes that you can capture water at a very fast rate,” said Cho. “We can start to forecast how big of a system we would need to produce a set amount of water. 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.”
Nature-Inspired Water Capture
This technology and approach has been tested outdoors in Las Vegas, and is effective down to 10% humidity. It directly captures water in a liquid salt solution that is suitable for subsequent processing into drinking water or energy production, enabling new capabilities for arid regions.
A key ingredient in the process is a hydrogel membrane “skin.” The inspiration for this material comes from nature – specifically tree frogs and air plants, which use a similar technique to transport water from ambient air into a liquid for internal storage.
“We took that biological idea and tried to do it in our own way,” he said. “There are so many cool things happening in nature – you just have to look around, learn, and be inspired.”
Solar Power Enhances Sustainability
Additionally, the research demonstrates that atmospheric water harvesting can be solar-powered. Thanks to the frequent sunlight experienced in places such as the Las Vegas Valley – which averages 300 sunny days a year sunlight can provide enough energy to reduce the theoretical and eventual cost for generating water.
“Our water resources are depleting and our planet’s climate is changing,” said Cho. “To reach sustainability, we have to change our habits. This whole idea seemed like science fiction, but this is possible, and we’re actually doing it.”
Commercial Application of Water Harvesting Technology
The research is already being put into practical use in the form of WAVR Technologies, Inc. Cho co-founded this UNLV startup, making devices capable of capturing water vapor from the air around us for commercial and individual uses.
WAVR is the premiere university business spinoff from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Regional Innovation Engines program aimed at bringing to market technologies that address regional sustainability and climate concerns.
Reference:
“High-yield atmospheric water capture via bioinspired material segregation”
by Yiwei Gao, Areianna Eason, Santiago Ricoy, Addison Cobb, Ryan Phung, Amir Kashani, Mario R. Mata, Aaron Sahm, Nathan Ortiz, Sameer Rao and H. Jeremy Cho, 22 October 2024, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2321429121
It sounds like something Elon would’ve come up with.
“Might be a desert survival tool, but how much energy to obtain useful water from the salt-water which it generates?”
Where did you come up with salt water?
This technology and approach has been tested outdoors in Las Vegas, and is effective down to 10% humidity. It directly captures water in a liquid salt solution that is suitable for subsequent processing into drinking water or energy production, enabling new capabilities for arid regions.
I read that book when I was a teen.
It’s a whole series now. With prequels and sequels..................
That would be the required solar power?
There’s generally subsurface water available that merely needs filtering and/or treatment. Electric pumps and filtering systems can run off solar power too, y’know, and the yield will always exceed these kinds of gee-whiz things.
These pie-in-the-sky doodads are generally peddled as a way to end the supposed privatization of water by, you guessed it, Big Corporations.
https://www.popsci.com/this-device-may-pull-water-out-thin-air-but-not-as-well-as-we-hoped/
https://search.brave.com/search?q=water+vapor+extractor+for+third+world+scam
“In the atmosphere, however, are approximately 3,100 cubic miles of water vapor, almost enough water to fill the Great Lakes. Water vapor is an unlimited resource that is continuously replenished by the planet’s hydrologic cycles, so taking water from the air will not harm the environment.”
https://www.asme.org/topics-resources/content/6-innovative-atmospheric-water-generators
The hydrological cycle means there will always be water vapor to harvest. As long as winds blow over the oceans the lowest sink of gravity driven water flow. Nevada is only a few days or less air time for air that was over the Pacifica to be over Nevada. One only needs to look at how fast clouds move from the coast to coast big frontal systems can cross the whole USA in less than a week.
Harvesting water from the bottom 100 feet or less of the air column is not even going to touch the miles of air above it.
Neat tech using two absorbents you could grab water and co2 at the same time. Calcium chloride for water and sodium hydroxide for co2. Then the list of things you can make with desert solar power gets interesting. It’s already been proven you can make acetate 18 more yield per square meter than plants could do it via water+co2+ solar panels. Acetate is a base hydrocarbon from there you can culture via bacteria,yeast or archaea virtually any other biological output. First up would be microbial complete protein, starch or sugars too, lipids as well. The three things needed by every monogastric animal you and I included. Plants are less than 1% solar photons into biomass and less into corn kernels. Panels are 25% and the electrochemical cells turn water+co2+electrons at 90% Faraday into acetate a factor of 18 better. You could grow yeast that make alcohol on acetate in huge amounts too. Or use an archaea and make methane with it, or propane or butane really any of the alkanes or alkenes.
The process is spacefood because that’s how humans get off this rock. We are not taking chickens and pigs and cows no way the mass balance works for livestock. Space food is going to be electrochemical and hydroponic with engineered microbes that eat some base carbon molecule.
Having water plus co2 in a environment with 330+ days of full sun per year could feed billions more people where every acre makes 18 as much carbohydrates or proteins vs an acre in even a tropical jungle. Water from air in meaningful quantities changes the whole paradigm of desert use. Growing crops in the desert is stupid. Turning air into high yield hydrocarbons for human use is very smart we don’t need fusion power on earth to use the already giant thermonuclear reactor in the sky’s fusion power.
This is the way....
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/10/241008103809.htm
Here is the USGS map of the massive brackish aquifers under the USA. Remember most of the USA was under an ocean multiple times in the last few hundred million years those sediments are still fully saturated with salt water.
https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs075-03/
You could also put panels up over long rows of fish troughs and use the reject brine which is as salty as seawater to grow saltwater fish and shrimp and lobsters. The panels power the desal and pumps you control the process via voltage to output seawater reject brine from the brackish input going from 10000ppm to <500 on your fresh output and 30,000ppm on your reject a 3:1 recovery ratio. From the fish troughs you pull water out of them as they exceed 35,000ppm and send that to a rapid spray desal process that recovers 98% of the water as fresh and 2% is lost with the solid salt product which is then sold as road salts or landfilled with say all those trees from the billion tree project. The salt locks the carbon up since it essentially turns the wood to petrified wood in clay lined landfill. Shame to waste all that lumber though better to just landfill the salt by itself.
The end products are tons of fresh water, lots of yummy redfish or snapper with some shrimp and lobsters on the side. You could also grow saltwater microalgae in those troughs with yields of starch,lipids or both at ten times or more what the very beat land plants the agaves could do. Here again massive amounts of food or biofuels. Water plus sun = lots of good things.
Take this to a humongous scale in desert areas. What is the effect of harvesting whatever humidity is left in desert air to the surrounding flora and fauna? I feel the same way about huge, vast farms of windmills.....each blade pulling more and more energy out of prevailing surface winds.
The air volume is so great even pulling every molecule of water from the bottom couple hundred feet of air would only be a few tenths of a percent of the miles of air mass above it. The hydrological cycle means there will always be moisture in the air. From coast to coast big frontal systems can cross the whole USA in less than a week with air from the Pacific Ocean basin. Gulf of Mexico moisture makes it to the Midwest on the regular. Sahara dust goes as far as the Amazon rainforest and we get it here in Texas at certain times of the year. The atmosphere is literally a giant river system of currents moving air and water globally. So no humans would never be able to pull enough out over an air column 35,000 feet high and thousands of miles wide to ever truly effect the atmospheric water cycle
half of the water vapor in the atmosphere is found within two kilometers of the Earth’s surface. Absolute humidity is the measure of the amount of water vapor in air. It’s basically whey observation telescopes try to locate themselves on high mountains. Less vapor to occlude or fuzz images of stars.
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