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A strange material can be part of the most immediate solution the world needs. Device managed to extract more than 50 milliliters of drinking water per day – in the middle of the desert.
What if a strange “bubble plastic” helped solve one of the most urgent problems in the world – the lack of water?
This bizarre -looking new device has managed to extract more than 50 milliliters of drinking water a day when tested in the Death Valley in California, one of the most arid places on the planet.
“Our atmospheric water fundraising window establishes a new standard in daily water production and in climate adaptability, ”writes the authors of the published on June 1 in the Nature Water.
This new device “represents an advance towards practical, scalable, safe and sustainable solutions for decentralized water supply in the regions most affected by scarcity,” they say.
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Those responsible are a Hydrogel mixture made of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), lithium chloride (a water that attracts water), glycerol and black ink.
“Through our work with soft materials, we know that Hydrogels are excellent to absorb water from the air“, Explains the mechanical engineer Xuanhe Zhao, from MIT, to
The team shaped this hydrogel in the form of “bubble” plastic to Increase the available surface area for capture.
“This is just a prototype and there are many aspects we can optimize,” says study co-author Chang Liu. “We are working on a new generation of materials to further improve the intrinsic properties of the system. ”
