Adsorption-based atmospheric water harvesting device for arid climates.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 29568033.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-018-03162-7 and PMC identifier 5864962.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Water scarcity is a particularly severe challenge in arid and desert climates. While a substantial amount of water is present in the form of vapour in the atmosphere, harvesting this water by state-of-the-art dewing technology can be extremely energy intensive and impractical, particularly when the relative humidity (RH) is low (i.e., below ~40% RH). In contrast, atmospheric water generators that utilise sorbents enable capture of vapour at low RH conditions and can be driven by the abundant source of solar-thermal energy with higher efficiency. Here, we demonstrate an air-cooled sorbent-based atmospheric water harvesting device using the metal-organic framework (MOF)-801 [Zr<sub>6</sub>O<sub>4</sub>(OH)<sub>4</sub>(fumarate)<sub>6</sub>] operating in an exceptionally arid climate (10-40% RH) and sub-zero dew points (Tempe, Arizona, USA) with a thermal efficiency (solar input to water conversion) of ~14%. We predict that this device delivered over 0.25 L of water per kg of MOF for a single daily cycle.