Exceptional water production yield enabled by batch-processed portable water harvester in semi-arid climate

Shan, He (author), Li, Chunfeng (author), Chen, Zhihui (author), Ying, Wenjun (author), Poredoš, Primož (author), Ye, Zhanyu (author), Pan, Quanwen (author), Wang, Jiayun (author), Wang, Ruzhu (author)

Sorption-based atmospheric water harvesting has the potential to realize water production anytime, anywhere, but reaching a hundred-gram high water yield in semi-arid climates is still challenging, although state-of-the-art sorbents have been used. Here, we report a portable and modularized water harvester with scalable, low-cost, and lightweight LiCl-based hygroscopic composite (Li-SHC) sorbents. Li-SHC achieves water uptake capacity of 1.18, 1.79, and 2.93 g g−1 at 15%, 30%, and 60% RH, respectively. Importantly, considering the large mismatch between water capture and release rates, a rationally designed batch processing mode is proposed to pursue maximum water yield in a single diurnal cycle. Together with the advanced thermal design, the water harvester shows an exceptional water yield of 311.69 g day−1 and 1.09 g gsorbent−1 day−1 in the semi-arid climate with the extremely low RH of ~15%, demonstrating the adaptability and possibility of achieving large-scale and reliable water production in real scenarios.

• Language: English
• Keywords: atmospheric water harvesting, nanocomposite sorbents, porous stuctures, advanced thermal engineering, field tests
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FS - Faculty of Mechanical Engineering
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2022
• Number of pages: 10 str.
• Numbering: Vol. 13, art. 5406
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-145244
• UDC: 628.116
• ISSN on article: 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-33062-w
• COBISS.SI-ID: 143312899
• Publication date in RUL: 13.04.2023

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Nature communications
• Shortened title: Nat. Commun.
• Publisher: Nature Publishing Group
• ISSN: 2041-1723
• COBISS.SI-ID: 2315876

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: pridobivanje vode iz atmosfere, nanokompozitna sorpcijska sredstva, porozne strukture, napredno toplotno inženirstvo, terenski preizkusi

Projects

• Funder: Other - Other funder or multiple funders
• Funding programme: Foundation for Innovative Research Groups ofthe National Natural Science Foundation of China
• Project number: 51521004