“Water, water everywhere nor or any drop to drink,” wrote Samuel Taylor Coleridge in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a long poem in the late 18th century about a sailor who is surrounded by salt water that he can’t drink.

According to the World Health Organization, in five years, some two billion people in the world already live in areas suffering from a scarcity of water – and the numbers will increase. Some of them live near oceans, but the salty water can’t relieve their thirst.

For this reason, access to freshwater is one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations in 2015. This goal was the motivation for developing a standalone system for producing water from the air.

Have you ever walked to your car on a cool morning under a blue sky, when there was no rain the night before, but all the windows are covered with water droplets? The water has condensed from the air on the cool windows. What a great idea, you may have thought, to produce precious water!

Some companies in the Western world have, in fact, thought of this amazing idea and actually produce electrical devices to produce water from the air. But their technologies are not suited to the developing world where there is no electricity and the process requires a lot of energy. The technique may also produce water that contains much harmful pollution.

Ben Gido, who received a master’s degree in environmental engineering at Haifa’s Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, is now working or IsrAid, an Israeli humanitarian helping men, women and children suffering from water scarcities in disadvantaged countries.

Working with Prof. David Broday and Prof. Eran Friedler from the Environmental, Water and Agricultural Engineering Division of the Technion’s Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Stephen and Nancy Grand Water Research Institute, Gido and colleagues have developed the first technology of its kind in the world –a standalone energy-efficient system for producing clean water from the air.

 “I saw in these countries that children constantly go to small and often-polluted lakes and other bodies of water and scoop them into plastic containers; then they go back to the village – over and over. They don’t go to school. They don’t have an education or good health.” Women, too, are also forced to collect water, which keeps they busy but doesn’t let them advance.

The innovative Technion system, described by experts as a “game changer” for the developing world, produces water from the air  even in desert regions such as the Sahara. The innovative system is capable of providing water to small and isolated communities, without the need to transport water for long distances. 

Unlike the existing technology, the Technion researchers’ system is based on a two-stage cyclic process – separation of moisture from the air by absorption using a highly concentrated saline solution and separation of the moisture from the desiccant under and condensing the vapor under sub-atmospheric pressure conditions. 

“Besides being energy efficient, the new technology offers an additional advantage: as part of the process the water undergoes also pollutant removal processes,” said Broday. “Our technology turns water into a commodity as it enables water to be produced anywhere in the world, without being dependent upon existing sources of liquid water. The prototype we have built demonstrates that the system works as expected and we currently work toward turning it into a commercial product.”

“Existing technologies work simply as “reverse” air conditioners, by cooling the whole air mass entering the system in order to condense the moisture,” explained Friedler. “This ‘direct cooling’ approach is energetically inefficient, since such systems waste much of their energy requirements on cooling about 97% of the air volume, which is non-condensable. The new technology involves cooling of only the moisture that has been extracted from the air, significantly reducing the amount of energy required to produce water.”

“We are not competing with desalination,” added Broday. “Israel is a developed nation situated near the sea and can supply all its water needs through desalination systems. Among other reasons, this is because Israel is a relatively small country and a significant portion of the population lives along the coast, such that water does not need to be transported over long distances. In contrast, transporting desalinated water to communities situated far from the coast is very expensive due to the need for extremely long pipelines. Herein lies the advantages of the new technology.” 

The system is particularly relevant for small and isolated communities that are located far from fresh- or salty- water sources, as it can produce water where it is most needed. The ambient air moves from the tower into the generator and then flows as water out of the system. Air pollutants are not absorbed. If there are any bacteria, they are killed by a saline (salt) solution that is 10 times more salty than sea water, but the salt does not reach the final product

“In addition to being an essential component of life, water also influences other important aspects, among them individual and community health and even the empowerment of women. In many places, young girls do not attend school because they are busy providing water for the family. Even as adults, women devote hours to transporting water,” said Friedler. “Furthermore, access to water is a central factor in bloody confrontations in arid regions nowadays and constitutes one of the foremost motives for immigration. In such conflict zones, the risk of children dying from polluted water is 20 times higher than dying due to violent acts.”