If you live in a particularly humid environment, there’s a good chance you might have a dehumidifier. Basically this sucks water out of the air to help make your surroundings less humid, which can be rather uncomfortable as it makes you feel like you’re sweating all the time.
Usually what happens with all that water is that it is throw away or used to water plants or maybe even flush the toilet, but what if you could drink that water instead? Scientists over at MIT and UC Berkeley might have come up with a device that does just that, and to top it off they have made it so that the device can be powered using solar energy.
According to Professor Omar Yaghi who is one of the scientists working on the project, he is calling this device a harvester of “personalized water”. He envisions a future where water could be supplied “off-grid” and there is enough to supply the needs of a household. It even works in not-so humid environments as it only requires about 20-30% humidity to work.
This device could potentially save a lot of lives especially in regions around the world where water isn’t as easily accessible, or it could also be used in times of drought. In a prototype that was built by mechanical engineer Evelyn Wang of MIT, it managed to produce about 2.8 liters of water using 2.2 pounds of metal-organic framework over a period of 12 hours.