Solar Energy Helps To Colletct Water

The latest issue of the famous international academic journal "Nature" published an environmental research paper. Researchers carried out a global assessment based on a hypothetical device and showed that the use of solar energy to collect water in the atmosphere may provide about 1 billion people with safe drinking water. This discovery may help provide a reference for the design of emerging and future water harvesting technologies.

The paper introduced that about 2.2 billion people in the world do not have access to safe drinking water, and the most populous areas are sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America. It is generally believed that atmospheric water collection devices can help solve the shortage of water resources. This type of device has two working methods: passive water collection devices, which are completely dependent on weather conditions, and collect pre-condensed dew or mist; active devices are the opposite, they or Solar energy is used to collect and condense water at night when the humidity is high, or to work continuously in cycles, which reduces the required size of the device. However, the performance and global potential of these devices have not yet been analyzed.

Based on this, the corresponding author of the paper and a researcher from X Development Corporation (formerly Google X) in the United States demonstrated a geospatial tool for assessing the potential of atmospheric catchment devices to provide safe drinking water. The tool reflects global humidity patterns, temperature and solar radiation, based on hypothetical solar water collection devices (approximately 1-2 square meters of solar heat collection area).

The research results show that the tool can in fact fully cooperate with strong sunlight and humidity of more than 30% through continuous daytime operation, supporting the production of 5 liters of water per day on average. If widely deployed, such devices have the potential to provide safe drinking water for about 1 billion people living in such climatic conditions. The authors of the paper also compared these results with the potential of existing devices, showing that emerging technologies are expected to achieve these goals.

The authors of the paper stated that these analyses focused on safe drinking water and did not evaluate other uses such as irrigation, sanitation or cooking. They believe that the continuous development of technology may meet their predictions and can provide references for future designs to maximize global impact.