Exceptional water production yield enabled by batch-processed portable water harvester in semi-arid climate.

Shan, He; Li, Chunfeng; Chen, Zhihui; Ying, Wenjun; Poredoš, Primož; Ye, Zhanyu; Pan, Quanwen; Wang, Jiayun et al. · Nat Commun · 2022

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

Sorption-based atmospheric water harvesting has the potential to realize water production anytime, anywhere, but reaching a hundred-gram high water yield in semi-arid climates is still challenging, although state-of-the-art sorbents have been used. Here, we report a portable and modularized water harvester with scalable, low-cost, and lightweight LiCl-based hygroscopic composite (Li-SHC) sorbents. Li-SHC achieves water uptake capacity of 1.18, 1.79, and 2.93 g g<sup>-1</sup> at 15%, 30%, and 60% RH, respectively. Importantly, considering the large mismatch between water capture and release rates, a rationally designed batch processing mode is proposed to pursue maximum water yield in a single diurnal cycle. Together with the advanced thermal design, the water harvester shows an exceptional water yield of 311.69 g day<sup>-1</sup> and 1.09 g g<sub>sorbent</sub><sup>-1</sup> day<sup>-1</sup> in the semi-arid climate with the extremely low RH of ~15%, demonstrating the adaptability and possibility of achieving large-scale and reliable water production in real scenarios.

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