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Access to clean water that is safe and readily available for drinking, domestic use, hygiene, and food production is an essential requirement for health, well being, and societal development as a whole. However this fundamental need is not met for large parts of the world’s population. It is therefore unsurprising that access to clean water has been recognized as a sustainable development goal (SDG) by the United Nations. This Collection features recent developments in materials science and engineering that can offer solutions to improve our capabilities in water treatment and water harvesting technologies, from fundamental investigations of materials properties to practical demonstrations of their applications.
In this Collection, Nature Communications, Communications Chemistry, Communications Materials, Communications Engineering and Nature Water welcome submissions that report advances in water filtration and desalination, water pollution remediation and water harvesting with demonstrated potential for improved application.
Sorbent-assisted atmospheric water harvesting is one of the technologies currently explored to produce clean water especially in dry land locations. A metal–organic framework harvester has been shown to harvest water effectively in the Death Valley.
Solar-powered interfacial system has emerged as a sustainable, efficient and CO2-neutral strategy to produce clean water. The solar-powered graphene/alginate hydrogel-based clean water extractor shows super resistance to the transport of complex contaminants and has an ultra-antifouling capacity.
Sorption-based atmospheric water harvesting has the capability of capturing water from air anytime and anywhere. A facile strategy to synthesize bidirectionally aligned and hierarchically structured nanocomposite could realize scalable and efficient sorption-based atmospheric water harvesting.
Flue gas is a rich source of water and energy. Here, authors provide a state-of-the-art system anchored in organosilica membrane technology, attaining impressive steam recovery, delivering up to 70% energy recovery, and offering a promising remedy for global water shortages.
A water harvesting strategy utilizing a hygroscopic lithium chloride impregnated cellulose scaffold yields high water harvesting rate with low energy input over a wide range of relative humidity. The strategy, reported by Wenkai Zhu, Yun Zhang, Chi Zhang and coworkers, provides a potential solution to the global water scarcity problem particularly in arid areas.
Hydrophilic metal-organic framework NU-1500-Cr is a high performing water harvesting material, but the mechanism through which it adsorbs water remains unclear. Here, molecular dynamics simulations and infrared spectroscopy are used to follow the water adsorption process in NU-1500-Cr from the initial hydration stage to complete filling of the MOF pores.
Sorption-based atmospheric water harvesting has the potential to realize flexible water production but reaching high water yield in semi-arid climate is still challenging. Here, the authors report a portable and modularized water harvester with scalable, low-cost, and lightweight hygroscopic composite sorbent which shows an exceptional water production in semi-arid climate with low relative humidity of 15%.
Conventional desalination processes generate clean water and reject brine to sea, which is harmful to the aquatic life. Here, the authors propose a low- cost scalable and foldable mangrove-mimetic device for solar thermal distillation and passive salt collection without brine discharge.