Dubai: An international research team from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (Kaust) develops an innovative passive cooling technology that extracts water from the air using only gravity, without electricity or costly energy sources.
This new system relies on inexpensive, widely available materials. In addition to cooling electronic devices, the collected water can be used for irrigation, cleaning, cooling buildings, and other purposes.
Scientists estimate that the atmosphere holds six times more water than all the fresh water in rivers combined. While existing technologies function adequately, they often depend on electricity to harvest sufficient water, particularly in arid regions like Saudi Arabia, where costly electricity infrastructure can hinder the adoption of solar cells in rural areas, as reported by the Saudi Press Agency.
One challenge with current methods is that water tends to cling to the surfaces of harvesting devices.
To address this, Kaust discovered that applying a lubricant coating, a blend of a commercial polymer and silicon oil, enhances water collection using just gravity.
After testing the new device in natural conditions in Thuwal, about 100 kilometre north of Jeddah, over the course of a year, they found it nearly doubled the water collection rate compared to existing atmospheric water harvesting technologies.
