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MOF water harvester produces water from Death Valley desert air in ambient sunlight

Nature Water volume 1, pages 626–634 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

Sorbent-assisted atmospheric water harvesting has emerged as a promising method to mitigate water stresses in arid climates. Here a new water harvester based on metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) has been designed, constructed and tested in two locations in California (Death Valley National Park and Berkeley). This water harvester is capable of harvesting water at a capacity of 210 and 285 g H2O per kilogram of MOF-303 per day, respectively. The unique configuration of the MOF cartridge and the condenser in the harvester allows the highest efficiency of water uptake and harvesting from air without power or energy input aside from ambient sunlight. Indeed, this water harvester operates passively with double the amount of water harvested compared with our previous passive MOF water harvester. These results highlight the great potential for addressing the water stress problem in the world.

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Fig. 1: New generation of passive MOF water harvester.
Fig. 2: MOF cartridge design and water uptake properties.
Fig. 3: Laboratory test of the passive AWH device.
Fig. 4: AWH in Berkeley.
Fig. 5: AWH in the Death Valley.

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Data availability

The datasets that support this study are available in Zenodo repository with identifier (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7990951).

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the permission of conducting research in the private property of The Oasis at Death Valley from 22 to 23 August 2022, located in the Furnace Creek, the Death Valley National Park. Z.Z. thanks A. L. Chaudoin from National Park Service for helpful discussion and suggestions on conducting research near the Death Valley National Park area (36.5319° N, −116.5455° W). The authors thank E. Neumann for his help in collecting SEM images and A. Oddo for his engaging educational discussions. This work was supported by the Joint UAEU–UC Berkeley Laboratories for Materials Innovations, the Fifth Generation (W.S. and O.M.Y.), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) under contract HR0011-21-C-0020 (W.S., Z.Z., A.H.A. and O.M.Y.) and KACST-UC Berkeley Center of Excellence for Nanomaterials for Clean Energy Applications.

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Author notes

  1. Woochul Song

    Present address: Division of Environmental Science and Engineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), Pohang, South Korea

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Woochul Song, Zhiling Zheng, Ali H. Alawadhi & Omar M. Yaghi

  2. Kavli Energy Nanoscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Woochul Song, Zhiling Zheng, Ali H. Alawadhi & Omar M. Yaghi

  3. Bakar Institute of Digital Materials for the Planet, College of Computing, Data Science, and Society, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Woochul Song, Zhiling Zheng, Ali H. Alawadhi & Omar M. Yaghi

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Contributions

W.S. and O.M.Y. conceived and designed the research. W.S. and O.M.Y. led the project and interpreted the results. W.S. designed, constructed and tested the device. W.S. performed energy transfer simulations. W.S. and Z.Z. synthesized and characterized sorbent samples including powder X-ray diffraction, Fourier-transform infra-red spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy data. W.S., Z.Z. and A.H.A. performed field test at Death Valley and analysed data. W.S. and O.M.Y. wrote the manuscript, and all the authors reviewed it.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Omar M. Yaghi.

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Competing interests

O.M.Y. is co-founder of ATOCO Inc., aiming at commercializing related technologies. The remaining authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Water thanks the anonymous reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary methods, Figs. 1–24 and Tables 1 and 2.

Reporting Summary

Supplementary Video 1

Time-lapse video of AWH in the Death Valley area (20 August 2022).

Supplementary Video 2

Real-time (1× speed) video to show initial water droplets during the AWH test in the Furnace Creek, observed at ~11:30, 23 August 2022.

Supplementary Video 3

Time-lapse video of AWH in the Furnace Creek, the Death Valley (23 August 2022).

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Song, W., Zheng, Z., Alawadhi, A.H. et al. MOF water harvester produces water from Death Valley desert air in ambient sunlight. Nat Water 1, 626–634 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44221-023-00103-7

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