Posted on 04/13/2017 7:55:01 PM PDT by Innovative
You can’t squeeze blood from a stone, but wringing water from the desert sky is now possible, thanks to a new spongelike device that uses sunlight to suck water vapor from air, even in low humidity. The device can produce nearly 3 liters of water per day, and researchers say future versions will be even better. That means homes in the driest parts of the world could soon have a solar-powered appliance capable of delivering all the water they need, offering relief to billions of people.
There are an estimated 13 trillion liters of water floating in the atmosphere at any one time, equivalent to 10% of all of the freshwater in our planet’s lakes and rivers. Over the years, researchers have developed ways to grab a few trickles, such as using fine nets to wick water from fog banks, or power-hungry dehumidifiers to condense it out of the air. But both approaches require either very humid air or far too much electricity to be broadly useful.
To find an all-purpose solution, researchers led by Omar Yaghi, a chemist at the University of California, Berkeley, turned to a family of crystalline powders called metal organic frameworks, or MOFs. Yaghi developed the first MOFs—porous crystals that form continuous 3D networks—more than 20 years ago. The networks assemble in a Tinkertoy-like fashion from metal atoms that act as the hubs and sticklike organic compounds that link the hubs together. By choosing different metals and organics, chemists can dial in the properties of each MOF, controlling what gases bind to them, and how strongly they hold on.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencemag.org ...
I just knew Ross Perot was right!
Drier air; gonna need a whole lotta Chapstick.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
Water vapor is the #1 greenhouse gas. If billions of liters of water vapor are sucked from the atmosphere, climate catastrophism can be averted!
In Florida we should be able to do a lot better than a few liters of water a day. Marketed right it’ll be in everyone ‘hurricane kit’ next year.
Ed
Debunked by who?
LOL!
My first job was programing binary load lifters, very similar to your vaporators!
If it works, environmentalists will oppose it.
WOW
Respiration, perspiration, urination, evaporation....it all winds back where it started, to be recycled and consumed again.
Heard about this before. If it requires any type of maintenance, there are vast numbers of potential beneficiaries that couldn’t be bothered with that.
Why not just use a simple vacuum pump to get water from the air?
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