It's fascinating to learn that we are making strides toward unique innovations. Who ever thought you could extract moisture from desert air? Something from a movie that has always seemed like an impossibility in modern society has turned into a reality!

Luke Skywalker wasn't just a farmer. In the original 1977 Star Wars film, the lead character was desperate to leave his home planet of Tatooine, where his family farmed moisture from the atmosphere using devices called “vaporators”.

Air naturally carries water vapour, and the warmer the air and the higher the relative humidity, the more water vapor it can carry. So technology that generates water from air is most suited to warm and humid climates. At 100% humidity, the air at 40℃ contains about 51 milliliters of water per cubic meter of air. For the same humidity at 10℃, the air contains only 9.3 milliliters.

If we cool that air from 40℃ to 10℃, we should be able to extract that water difference, which is 41.7 milliliters for each cubic meter of air. Under these conditions with current technology, we could produce 147 liters of water per hour using about the same energy as 18 domestic electric kettles.

At lower humidity, such as in a desert, there is less water in the air and so the system will be less efficient.

The simplest way of drawing water from air is with passive technology that provides a cool surface for fog or water vapor to condense onto. The selection of material and surface quality are critical for maximizing water collection. For example, farmers in Chile use a steel mesh to catch water from fog. Researchers have shown this can be made more efficient by adding a special coating that attracts water molecules.

Active cooling

Then there are active cooling technologies such as a refrigeration cycle similar to the one we use in air conditioning systems and refrigerators. You can also use solid-state thermoelectric cooling, which involves something called the Peltier effect.

But scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have now demonstrated another technology that could be even more efficient, using something called metal-organic frameworks powered by natural sunlight. The technology, described in the journal Science, uses a network of metal and organic molecules that can easily trap water vapor, which is then released using heat captured from the sun.

It has been reported that one kilogram of this material can harvest 2.8 liters of water a day at relative humidity levels as low as 20% without any other external power source. This makes it a particularly promising technology for harvesting water in arid or desert regions of the world.

What do you think of desert moisture farming? Are there any other Star Wars technology you would like to use in real life?

Article and Photo Source: CNN