Scientists Are Working on a Device That Could One Day Harvest Up to 10 Gallons of Drinking Water Per Hour From Thin Air
26th August 2018
Wong and his team set out to “miniaturize,” the process of harvesting atmospheric water using electrospun polymers.
Electrospinning can produce polymers as small as a few tens of nanometers across, which means that a huge surface area can be packed into a really small space. That makes the nanoscale-polymers super-efficient at collecting water, even in arid environments. The device, which could be powered by a lithium-ion battery, would also be able to filter water because the surface of the material would slough off any microbes or bacteria present in the water vapor.
While that may seem complicated, Wong said it’s not much different than how people in the Andes, and Namib beetles collect water — it’s just at a much smaller scale.