AWH TECHNOLOGIES

Traditional low-tech methods.

Emerging in it’s modern form in the 1980’s, fog catching technology, has been employed for acquiring water. Fog harvesting technology relies on specific climatic conditions being met to be effective.

Succesful projects have been developed in the highland coastal- and inland mountainous regions with high wind, where fog occurs frequently due to the natural compression of warm winds around the cold surface of inclined topographical features which create concentrations of relative humidity. This process is known as advection fog.

Using polarized fibers and polymers for netting (such as nylon, polyurathane and polypropylene) to aid with capturing and

As climate change is changing weatherpatterns all over the earth, waterstress - especially in densely urbanized areas in developing countries - is becoming a lot more common. Research into new ways to acquire freshwater from alternative sources is becoming an attractive project, to stabilize wateraccess in threatened areas and provide a greener and more accesible alternatives to traditional powerhungry methods, such as reverse osmosis desalination and conventional dehumidification.

A few actors who are making interesting progress in researching atmospheric water harvesting such as MIT and Texas university, as well as private companies such as Zero Mass Water - among many others.

As the princples are well established, the research is mainly focused on the development of specifically engineered materials, that perform well roles within atmospheric water harvesting systems, as well as how to make the systems scalable.

Whether creating a an actively (electrified) solar cycling AWH system, or a passive overnight absorption based system, the key performance/cost characteristics are:

A) Sorption and desorption rates of air vapor capturing material.

METAL ORGANIC FRAMEWORKS (MOF)

MIT / Berkeley Solar-cycling

+ Highly effective.

+ Do not degrade.

- Complicated to make properly.

- Expensive.

ZEOLITES

MIT Device Research Lab Overnight absorption https://www.2dmaterialsmag.com/metal-organic-framework-mof-device-that-pulls-water-from-the-air/https://news.mit.edu/2020/solar-extracts-drinkable-water-1014

+ Cheap.

+ Do not degrade.

+ Simple.

- Not very effective.

B) Energy required for both heating the capture material to release the vapor or/and cooling of condensation substrate to harvest the captured vapor.