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Scalable polymer films for sustainable moisture harvesting in arid environments
- ianai 4y agoCrazy talk time. I wonder if we could have a national water grid that used air currents to push water inland from the seas. Then capture it with stuff like this. It says this type of capture system works when RH<30%. Places like LV routinely see RH<.5%, for reference.
- origgm 4y agoGood point. Still a nice upgrade from >70 or >90 systems that aren't helpful unless in specific conditions. Also promising on the materials side -- cheap
- dylan604 4y agoIsn't this exactly what happens in California, only the mountains right along the coast prevent that moisture from going inland very far?
- formerkrogemp 4y ago> Crazy talk time. I wonder if we could have a national water grid that used air currents to push water inland from the seas. Then capture it with stuff like this. Isn't this just basically describing rain? Air currents pushing water inland? A national water grid? That's just the water cycle mate. I'm not sure pushing water vapor from the oceans and collecting the increased humidity from the air is energy efficient with mountains nearby, but the idea is really creative and kudos to those that came up with and might end up implementing it to solve water access issues.
- dhzhzjsbevs 4y agoThey're talking about evaporating water and capturing the humidity up a hill. Not really rain.
- ianai 4y agoSomething like this. It’s probably a question of whether wind currents could reliably take some well positioned humidity from water outlets further inshore. Might be totally overcome by the mountains though. It is not a crazy idea to develop infrastructure around such a goal though. Vast amounts of energy goes into aluminum production. So countries built huge power works for exactly that purpose.
- BurningFrog 4y agoThe abstract broke my brain. Would appreciate a layman summary!
- origgm 4y agoTheir system uses a natural gel to absorb moisture out of relatively dry air of humidity levels of 15 to 30 percent. Other systems have shown success but only in high humidity of 70 percent and higher.
- BurningFrog 4y agoThanks! Any info on how much water, and if the gel "wears out"? If you can grab drinking water out of the air, and wifi from the village Starlink, rural third world life can improve quite a bit!
- origgm 4y agoNot sure on the wearing out, but agreed - these developments are encouraging to say the least.
- dylan604 4y agoSure that's a great idea, but at the rate we're going, first world will be needing this tech too in a not distant future.
- formerkrogemp 4y agoCalifornia, New Mexico, and Utah would like some water now thank you. I don't know if you consider them "first world" or not.
- foobarian 4y agoCalifornia is easy: just cut down all the almond trees, that will buy a few decades of runway.
- 4y ago
- robinsoh 4y ago"The calculated vapor sorption rate of the SHPF is 1.65 L kg–1 h–1 at 30% RH, which indicates 1 kg of SHPF can capture 1.65 L of water vapor in 1 h, compared favorably among the state-of-the-art sorbent materials" "The captured water in the SHPF can be released by >70% within 10 min through mild heating at 60 °C under a wide range of RH (Fig. 3b and Supplementary Fig. 15). This mild heating temperature is realized by introducing the hydrophilic thermoresponsive HPC with optimized molecular weight, concentration, and pH of the initial precursor (Supplementary Figs. 9–14 and Supplementary Table 2)42." That sounds amazing to me if I understood it correctly.
- silencedogood3 4y ago
- origgm 4y agoYeah some of it is a little confusing to comprehend. But, agreed, the numbers in this study are amazing. Higher than anything I've seen to date.
- silencedogood3 4y ago
- apienx 4y agoI don't buy the solve-water-shortage-at-scale promise. You need to heat it up to 60 °C to release the water which is bound to degrade the material. Soft matter has excellent hygroscopic properties. But soft matter also has terrible stability.
- ethanwillis 4y agoOne thing that's not mentioned is that local flora and fauna have adapted to these arid environments by being able to actually condense water out of the air for themselves. If you deploy this at scale what happens? For example there are beetles that do this and the water drains straight to their mouth. [1] As well, cactus needles serve this purpose by creating a Laplace pressure gradient. [2] 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stenocara_gracilipes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stenocara_gracilipes 2 - https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acs.langmuir.5b03600 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acs.langmuir.5b03600