Extracting water from air

For human beings, nothing can replace water and drinking water has always been in demand with the increasing population.

- Dr. S. S. VERMA

Though, water covers around two-thirds of the earth's surface but water is still a scarce resource as only 1% of world's water is available as drinking water. With due availability of land and air all around, civilizations before have always moved/expanded in search of required drinking water.

Drinking water based on water cycle of earth (ocean-heat evaporation-cloud-rain-ocean) and then available from natural resources on earth is dwindling with time due to many reasons along with increasing population. People have already shifted to the use of smart technologies to transport, clean, uplift drinking water from other different sources but all these water resource technologies have their own geographic region specific limitations in general and for hilly and desert regions in particular. Earth's atmosphere holds six times more fresh water than all of its rivers combined, so, if it is possible technologically to harvest that water, in areas where people have no other fresh water source, can prove to be a wonder.

Atmospheric water extracting devices extract potable water from the air, either through condensation, exposing the air to desiccants (water-absorbing substances), or by pressurizing the air. With the development of science and technology, scientists and engineers are proposing different technologies to extract water from thin air (from fog) which will help people in getting enough drinking water at location specific with low cost. There are four main methods for extracting water from the atmosphere:

Fog nets: setting up physical nets in humid environments to collect the water in the air

Dew plates: using temperature differences to encourage water to condense on metal plates

Sorbents: using chemicals to absorb water from the air, and then heating the material to extract the water