15 cubic millimeters? That is the size of a BB. You would lose that in a puff of wind.
Nice idea, but too small to be of any interest. Scale it up to a cubic foot. THEN, I’d pay some attention.
Be still, my heart. This device will save us all. I wonder who the Chinese stole it from?
just carry a house- sized block of this crap with you into the desert, and after dealing with the lithium— wth- then you’re good!
And an added benefit is a little lithium to stabilize the moods of the people using this technology.
We’ve seen this movie before. Don’t invest your kids inheritance on this as a start up investment.
Is 30% humidity really arid?
Any way to get clean drinking water to the world is always a good plan.
I marvel at the large amounts of water my dehumidifier collects.
Cooling? Compressor based cooling? Peltier thermoelectric? Passive radiator with a fan? The first two can gather water without the balsa wood part.
Sounds like a possibility. But what are the environmental impacts of production and disposal?
I don’t believe that there’s a sufficient supply of balsa wood in the world to make this practical on a large scale.
This would have helped Saul Goodman and Mike Ehrmentraut while they were walking through the New Mexico desert with that 7 million dollars.
There's always that.
“Its moisture absorption–release performance was stable across 10 consecutive cycles, with less than 12% decline in efficiency,”
so, what would be the decline in efficiency after 100 cycles?
Should be added to your escape kit/lifeboat supplies: potable water will keep you alive.
Probably made of toxic materials, but it works!
“With climate change and population growth occurring simultaneously, innovations like this water-from-air harvester provide a glimmer of hope.”
LOL however we need out of the box thinking. Not sure this is it but they are trying.
I can make a cup or two of water every so often, because I’m a Wizard.
A whizzer Wizard. The Yellow Wizard of MiddleEarth.
lithium chloride, iron oxide nanoparticles, a carbon nanotube layer which you will be drinking along with the H20
https://www.rmit.edu.au/news/all-news/2025/may/spongy-water-harvester
“With nine sponge cubes, each weighing 0.8 grams, 15 milliliters can be absorbed and released into the cup.
“In outdoor tests, our device captured 2.5 milliliters of water per gram overnight and released most of it during the day, achieving a daily water collection efficiency of 94%,” Hou said.
“At 30% humidity, our device absorbed water at about 0.6 milliliters per gram.”
They don’t give the density of the material but they do show those 9 cubes in the palm of a average sized man. At 0.8grams each. They are between one cm or two cm on each side based on that hand for scale. Wish they had a banana for scale....I digress
At 1.5 cm per side that’s 3.375 cubic centimeters at 0.8 grams or 0.23g/cm^3. One cubic meter of this material would mass out at 237,037 grams at 2.5 grams H2O per gram of material = 592,592 grams of H2O...@1000g/L that’s over 590 liters of water that is for a single cubic meter of this material. Even at 0.6ml/g that’s still 142 liters of water. The average washer/dryer is smaller than a cubic meter in size.
Here again forget solar heating make this into sheets one of these cubes thick by 2 meters by 1.8 by 2.4 meters panels...That’s 6 foot by 8 foot freedom units. At 1.5*1.5cm on a side you fit 19,200 of those cubes on a single flat panel. 9 of them made 15ml, 19,200 would make 32,000ml now stack those panels side by side in a shipping container the 8 foot’m dimension is the up and the 6 foot is the deep a 53 foot container would hold 8 panels deep. Allowing for one missing panel width between panels is 1.5cm spacing. Thats 83 panels across. So 84*8= 664 panels @32L each is 21,248L per cycle not a small amount from a container you could ship anywhere via trucks. Charge it by pumping air through it via a hole at one end and a blower, when it’s saturated close the air loop with a second shipping container that holds the blower the joule heating element and the cooled condenser and water storage tank. Two side by side with simple air hoses between them. Loop the heated gas until the humidity being released is below the dew point in the condenser then stop the heating and blow more outside air through the absorption panels until they saturate again...wash ,rinse and repeat. You could get multiple cycles per day again forget solar use modern heating and condenser methods.
lithium chloride is unsafe. I wouldn’t want to drink water from some thing using it.