Source futurism.com
A New Device Uses Sunlight to Create Drinking Water from Air
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 663 million people — one in ten — lack access to safe water. Fully one-third of the world’s population lacks plumbing enough to have access to a toilet—that’s more than 2.4 billion people. A 2016 report found that water shortages affect two-thirds of the world’s population. Water shortages — and the conflicts they cause — will worsen as climate change ramps up. In fact, the 2015 World Economic Forum cited lack of access to clean water as the number one global risk in existence today.
Working to find a solution to these problems, researchers have developed a sunlight-powered device that can extract water from even the driest desert skies, in the hope that the technology may one day supply even the poorest, driest areas of the world with clean drinking water. The basis for the device is a type of novel, porous material called metal-organic frameworks that pulls large amounts of water into its pores. The research, published in Science, shows that a kilogram of the material can trap several liters of water per day, even in the standard 20 percent humidity levels of arid regions.
From our very good friends over at futurism.com