“The
advancement we have achieved over our proof-of-concept demonstration last year
is the testing of a small-scale prototype in desert conditions where we believe
absorption-based water harvesting systems are most practical. In addition, we
have made several design improvements which enabled operation at greatly
improved efficiencies.
Sameer Rao, a
post-doctoral research associate who worked on the project in an interview with
Digital Trends.
MIT
is at it again!!! This time they've developed the technology that makes the
Moisture farms on Tatooine from Star Wars seem possible.
They've
basically developed a MOF (metal-organic framework) that attract water
molecules and condenses it as vapour as explained in the article “MIT’s
latest invention pulls clean drinking water out of thin air”, published 23
March 2018 by Luke Dormehl, Digitaltrends.
First a quick reminder of what a Moisture farm is and what life is on an automated farm run by droids.
The
MOF is technology that MIT has developed will make it possible to extract water
from the driest desert, making it survivable, if not habitable. The MIT Team
consists of the following notables:
1. MIT
associate professor of mechanical engineering Evelyn Wang
2. MIT
postdoc Sameer Rao
3. Graduate
student Hyunho Kim
4. Research
scientist Sungwoo Yang
5. Research
scientist Shankar Narayanan who is currently at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
and alumnus Ari Umans SM ’15
The
team reported their findings in the journal Science in a article that was
co-authored by Berkeley graduate student Eugene Kapustin, project scientist
Hiroyasu Furukawa, and professor of chemistry Omar Yaghi as noted in the
article “Water,
water everywhere … even in the air”, published April 14, 2017 by David
Chandler, MIT News Office.
The
MIT's team has been testing their tech in the dry air of Tempe, Arizona to
provide more evidence that it truly can extract water from even the driest air.
So
how does the MOF work to extract moisture from the air?
MIT and MOF Moisture
Farming – Space Colonization Now within grasp
Indeed,
harvesting water from the air is nothing new.
Fog
harvesting is already done in Chile and Morocco but requires very moist air,
with a relative humidity of 100 percent as this video explains.
Fog
harvesting works in very limited regions. The alternative, which is to chill
the air to its dew point, is called Dew Harvesting.
This
is basically a refrigerator turned inside out and is energy intensive, as power
has to be expended to keep the condenser plate cool. Worse, it need humidity
levels as high as 50% to generate any significant amount of water and as such,
is best done at night where the cooling equiptment can operate more efficiently
as this video explains.
There
are also “air wells” that are designed with special hydrophobic material that
require no energy to collect water.
The
MOF Method has none of these limitations and is completely passive as this
video explains.
The
researchers believe that a scaled-up version of their miniature MOF extraction
system could output more than a quarter-liter of water per day per kilogram of
MOF as predicted by Sameer Rao, a post-doctoral research associate who worked
on the project, quote: “…By careful design and optimization, we developed a
device which is well suited for operation in arid conditions and under negative
dew points in which competing commercially mature technologies such as
refrigeration-based dewing cycles are infeasible.”
Still,
its cost might make it impractical for all but the driest of places on earth. But
its application for Space Travel seems more feasible, making colonizing the
solar system and the Asteroid belt possible.
Combined
with extracting water from Urine as explained in my blog article
entitled “University
of Ghent Solar Powered Urine to Beer Converter can end African Water Crisis”
it could be use to extract water from the living habitats to be set up on the
Moon and Mars, making the recycling of water for drinking purposes possible.
No comments:
Post a Comment