This sponge-like nanomaterial uses HVAC systems to create water from thin air

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In cities hit by drought—including Harare, Zimbabwe, where the city turned off taps in some neighborhoods for weeks this summer —a new material could make it possible to pull clean drinking water directly from the air.
The sponge-like nanomaterial, from Ireland’s University of Limerick and a think tank and incubator fund called Molecule , is designed to be used in existing dehumidifiers, where it can help HVAC systems save energy at the same time that it offers a new source of water.
“The northern half of China and all of India are essentially in a permanent water shortage that’s getting worse,” says Michael Zaworotko, a professor at the University of Limerick who studies crystal engineering.
Another one-third are facing water shortages in the next 10 years.”
Only one one-thousandth of the world’s water is in the atmosphere, “but it’s everywhere, and it’s infinitely renewable,” Zaworotko says.
“If you take water out of the air, it recycles out of the ocean.” Tapping into the atmosphere is a way to circumvent the existing problems of distribution, whether a community is dealing with polluted groundwater or lack of water or a combination of multiple problems.
“It’s got three things that you need in a water harvesting material,” says Zaworotko.
It has a very low energy for recycling, so you don’t have to use a lot of energy to recover the material and capture the water and do what you want with it.
And the third one—and this is the one where almost every existing dessicant fails—is how quickly it captures and releases the water.”
The material, called Regeneration Optimized Sorbent 37 (ROS-037), has tiny holes, each smaller than a nanometer and just the right size to capture water.
Inside a dehumidifier on top of a building, it can replace standard dessicants (water-absorbing materials) used today.
In a test with a prototype and one kilogram of the material, the team was able to produce one liter of water per hour in cold, dry conditions

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