IIT Guwahati Team Builds Material That Can Collect Drinking Water From Humid Air

We all know about the water crisis that our world is currently facing. While a majority portion of our planet comprises of water, only a fraction of it can be used for drinking water, and processing salt water to make it consumable is an expensive, energy-hungry process that not many can afford.

This problem is experienced more by people in places where they get scanty rainfall. However, what if I told you that you could soon capture and store water simply from the air?

IIT Guwahati

Reported first by PTI, researchers at IIT Guwahati have developed a new kind of material that is able to harvest water from humidity in the air. Uttam Manna, associate professor at IIT Guwahati¡¯s Centre of Nanotechnology sought inspiration from plants and insects to collect water right out of air while adopting the concept of hydrophobicity in their invention.

Manna explained, ¡°The concept of hydrophobicity can be understood by looking at the lotus leaf. The lotus leaf is water repellent because there is a layer of trapped air between the leaf surface and the water droplet, which causes the droplet to slide off the leaf."

Manna states that they¡¯re applying the concept of chemically patterned SLIPS (slippery Liquid-Infused Porous Surfaces) to harvest water from humid air holding a ton of moisture.

Unsplash

They created a patterned hydrophilic SLIP by applying a sponge-like porous polymeric material on a regular A4-sized paper. Moreover, chemically modulated hydrophilic spots were associated on the coating prior to lubricating with two distinct types of oils ¨C natural olive oil and synthetic krytox.

Manna said, "We have produced a highly efficient water harvesting interface where the fog collecting rate is really high. The researchers have also compared the performance of their pitcher-plant inspired materials to other bio-inspired ideas and have found theirs to be superior in terms of efficiency of water harvesting.¡±

He added, ¡°Given that more than 50 percent of India's population has no access to safe drinking water and about 200,000 people die every year due to lack of access to safe water, the inexpensive method for harvesting water from water vapour or fog droplets in air can potentially alleviate the water scarcity issues in the country.¡±

Their research involving the novel material has also been published in the prestigious journal of the Royal Society of Chemistry.