Progress and Expectation of Atmospheric Water Harvesting

• Published in: Joule Vol. 2; no. 8; pp. 1452 - 1475
• Main Authors: Tu, Yaodong, Wang, Ruzhu, Zhang, Yannan, Wang, Jiayun
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Inc 15.08.2018
• Subjects: atmospheric water harvesting; bioinspired surfaces; condensation enhancement; MOF; radiative cooling; radiative cooling; condensation enhancement; atmospheric water harvesting; bioinspired surfaces; MOF
• ISSN: 2542-4351; 2542-4351
• DOI: 10.1016/j.joule.2018.07.015

Even if people live in an arid desert, they know that plenty of water exists in the air they breathe. However, the reality tells us the atmospheric water cannot help to slake the world's thirst. Thus an important question occurs: what are the fundamental limits of atmospheric water harvesting that can be achieved in typical arid and semi-arid areas? Here, through a thorough review on the present advances of atmospheric water-harvesting technologies, we identify the achievements that have been acquired and evaluate the challenges and barriers that retard their applications. Lastly, we clarify our perspectives on how to search for a simple, scalable, yet cost-effective way to produce atmospheric water for the community and forecast the application of atmospheric water harvesting in evaporative cooling, such as electronic cooling, power plant cooling, and passive building cooling. [Display omitted] Airborne moisture is a potential source of a plentiful amount of freshwater that is accessible everywhere and can be easily co-operated with a renewable energy source (solar energy). This paper presents a comprehensive and critical review of state-of-the-art research on atmospheric water harvesting. From the viewpoint of applications, we are concerned most about whether an atmospheric water harvester can produce sufficient freshwater under a wide range of weather conditions in an energy-efficient way. Therefore, a variety of harvesting methods, including radiative cooling, solar distilling, and sorption-based water collecting, are reviewed and discussed based on their capture materials, system designs, and thermodynamic cycles. The study also presents a systematic performance comparison of recently proposed atmospheric water harvesters. Furthermore, we discuss four key problems that limit the cost-effectiveness and provide some solutions as perspectives. Atmospheric water-harvesting technology has experienced significant progress in the past 20 years. However, little research on atmospheric water harvesters is conducted with broad horizons, and system integrations have been poorly examined. More research is expected to deal with these issues to facilitate the efforts of turning decades of research on atmospheric water harvesting into tangible benefits in our daily life. Even if people live in an arid desert, they know that plenty of water exists in the air they breathe. However, the reality tells us the atmospheric water cannot help to slake the world's thirst. Thus an important question occurs: what are the fundamental limits of atmospheric water harvesting that can be achieved in typical arid and semi-arid areas? Here, through a thorough review on the present advances of atmospheric water-harvesting technologies, we identify the achievements that have been acquired and evaluate the challenges and barriers that retard their applications. Lastly, we clarify our perspectives on how to search a simple, scalable, yet cost-effective way to produce atmospheric water for the community and forecast the application of atmospheric water harvesting in evaporative cooling, such as electronic cooling, power plant cooling, and passive building cooling.