New technologies could provide water to Earth’s most arid climates
most speculative reaches of science fiction, there is no escaping humanity’s dependence on liquid water. Luke Skywalker, the hero of the original “Star Wars” trilogy, grows up on his uncle’s moisture farm, extracting water from Tatooine’s arid atmosphere. The residents of the desert world Arrakis, accessible to anyone with a copy of Frank Herbert’s novel “Dune” , likewise use windtraps to steal precious liquid from the air.
Collecting water from the air is nothing new. The Inca, who are widely thought to have invented the technique, placed buckets under trees to collect the condensation from heavy fog drifting in off the sea. On the Canary Islands laurels, junipers and pines have come to be known as “fountain trees” for their association with fog harvesting. People dwelling in the arid mountains of Oman have long built cisterns under trees for the same reason.
A key way to do this is with radiative cooling, a phenomenon that occurs at night when certain materials radiate enough heat to cool below the ambient temperature of their surroundings. After sunset, water condenses on these materials, forms droplets and trickles off. Chambers built of these radiative materials sometimes include adsorbent inner surfaces to which water in the air readily sticks.
Such technology is indeed affordable, with the prototype itself costing less than $50. But in many regions where water is desperately needed, humidity levels are too low for dew harvesting to be feasible. In places like these, the most promising options are those that make use of superabsorbent materials.
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