Posted on 04/13/2017 7:55:01 PM PDT by Innovative
You cant 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 planets 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 MOFsporous crystals that form continuous 3D networksmore 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 ...
It is very hard to believe, especially that they could do this in large quantities.
But the fact that they developed this at a US university adds to its credibility.
Moisture vaporators, just like on Tatooine.
CC
What will that do to climate change since water vapor is a green house gas.
Wow, sounds like a real innovation.
That's always been a problem, has it not?
CA....
This could help those in the desert like, in the Arabia be sure to get all the water they need to drink every day!
What will be the effect of sucking all that water out of the dessert air?
Sucking all that moisture from the air can’t be a good idea.
Prepper alert. Have several of these on hand.
I’m sure the insane leftists are already working feverishly to prove sucking all the moisture from the air will cause global warming to increase and the seas to rise.
Women and children hurt first and the most.
I dunno, it seems to me that the desert lives off the existing moisture in the air. Sucking the water vapor in a large capacity might lead to killing of all existing desert fauna.
Nah, it’s just them cheap R5 units. Get yourself an R4 and you won’t have those problems.
CC
They don't need it - they can just drink camel pee.
So-called “air wells” are an ancient technology; so the concept of extracting water from desert air isn’t new. However, the old air-well technology involves a lot of massive stones. This new tech operates on different principles, and appears to be much more portable, and to require much less space.
so they are creating dew ?
Nothing new. I saw this type of technology demonstrated in Namibia years ago.
It’s the red ones that always do that.
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