Yeah now we can industrially extract all the remaining water from the air as well as the ground.
Comment on Penn Engineers Discover a New Class of Materials That Passively Harvest Water from Air
Endmaker@ani.social 11 months ago
pull water from the air, collect it in pores and release it onto surfaces without the need for any external energy
If this is legit, it’s going to be revolutionary.
FMT99@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Jimbabwe@lemmy.world 11 months ago
You realize the amount of water is constant, right?
match@pawb.social 11 months ago
Not if Nestle has anything to say about it
shalafi@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Water is created and destroyed by biological and other natural processes. Here go photosynthesis:
6CO₂ + 6H₂O + Light → C₆H₁₂O₆ + 6O₂
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 11 months ago
We prefer the term “recycled dinosaur pee”.
spankmonkey@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I am fairly certain they are referring to the fact that we are already removing water from the fresh water cycle, and this could remove even more. For example, global warming combined with draining the aquafers means less water in the cycle as it was drained into the ocean and isn’t beaing replenished as snow/glaicers.
Yes, the total volume of water on the planet isn’t being changed by that shift, but the amount of freshwater is.
Eheran@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Nobody will remove water from ambient air in relevant amounts. Roughly 0.5 % of air is water vapor, a total of something like 10’000 km³ liquid water. This is replaced (residence time) about once every 10 days, so roughly 1’000 km³ daily.
Say we extract 10 km³ (10’000’000 m³) daily, enough for roughly 10 million people (including all industry, zero recycling of the water etc.). By that time you deal with 1 % of earths atmosphere every day. May I remind everyone how absurdly costly in any conceivable way that would be? You would rather lay a few pipes and purify sea water at a tiny(!) fraction of the cost.
aesthelete@lemmy.world 11 months ago
They do have a point about groundwater though.
baldingpudenda@lemmy.world 11 months ago
kinther@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Yeah that was my thought too. I hope it makes it to actual use cases and not just lab proof of concept.