Scientists at MIT have developed technology that could prove invaluable in tackling water shortages. — AFP Relaxnews
Scientists at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed a technology that could prove invaluable in tackling water shortages. They have created a material, made using lithium chloride, that can capture air in very arid zones and transform it into drinking water.
The world is currently experiencing unprecedented episodes of drought, amplified by the El Niño climatic phenomenon. While Canada faces the most devastating forest fires the country has seen in the last decade, global temperatures in June have recently broken records, according to the latest data from the EU's Copernicus program.
According to the European service, May was the hottest month on record for the oceans, and Europe is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world.
These droughts, amplified and replicated by climate disruption, are increasingly raising the threat of water shortages around the world. So much so that, in recent years, scientific and technological innovations have been developing in response in several parts of the world. These include harnessing ocean heat or recovering ocean water vapor, for example. Such techniques all have the same objective: to deploy low-cost, environmentally-friendly solutions to improve access to drinking water.
One of the latest initiatives involves using a hydrogel infused with lithium chloride, a highly absorbent salt, to capture ambient air and transform it into water. While this process has already been tested in the past, this technology is innovative in that it involves capturing air from very dry places, such as deserts.
Developed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the concept is based on materials already in use, known as hygroscopic hydrogels. Although effective and inexpensive, they are unable to absorb large quantities of water vapor, explain the researchers, whose latest work is published in the journal, Advanced Materials.
To remedy this, the MIT team has developed a new type of hydrogel infused with extremely high salt loads, enabling "unprecedented" water absorption. "This work is a significant step in the fabrication of high-performance sorbents for numerous applications such as atmospheric water harvesting, passive cooling, thermal energy storage, and space conditioning," the researchers conclude. – AFP Relaxnews
