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    Will the Earth's desert zones soon be more inhabitable? US researchers create an ultrasonic device that dramatically speeds up harvesting of water from the air, shaking it out in minutes instead of hours.
    Futurology

    Will the Earth’s desert zones soon be more inhabitable? US researchers create an ultrasonic device that dramatically speeds up harvesting of water from the air, shaking it out in minutes instead of hours.


    "Unlike heat-based designs, the device does require a power source. The team envisions that the device could be powered by a small solar cell, which could also act as a sensor to detect when the sorbent is full. It could also be programmed to automatically turn on whenever a material has harvested enough moisture to be extracted. In this way, a system could soak up and shake out water from the air over many cycles in a single day."

    There's no doubt climate change will make more of the Earth uninhabitable, but perhaps not with future tech, or tech like this just on the horizon.

    Deserts have surprisingly high humidity, especially at night. With the Sahara having 30-60% humidity at night. Though making use of that would require the ultrasonic water extractors to have solar-powered batteries, for obvious reasons.

    If you pair this solar-powered water extraction method, with protein produced by solar powered bioreactors, suddenly many marginally inhabitable parts of the planet become more liveable.

    Ultrasonic device dramatically speeds harvesting of water from the air

    Will the Earth's desert zones soon be more inhabitable? US researchers create an ultrasonic device that dramatically speeds up harvesting of water from the air, shaking it out in minutes instead of hours.
    byu/lughnasadh inFuturology

    View 11 Comments

    11 Comments

    1. asphaltaddict33 on

      Neat plan but deserts don’t have much humidity, by nature, so these devices aren’t going to be able to harvest much. Climate change is putting more water vapor into the air but not in uniform distribution…. So no deserts will be magically become habitable within our lifetime

    2. agentchuck on

      Iirc, regions of the Earth that need water for inhabitation generally have pretty dry air. Whether you’re shaking it out or running a dehumidifier, there just isn’t that much water in the air in arid regions. It sounds like this might be a more effective dehumidifier technology for humid regions, though? Possibly it could help with finding potable water there if other sources are saline or otherwise contaminated.

    3. dgkimpton on

      > Sahara having 30-60% humidity at night.

      I’m curious what happens to the desert if you then go and extract that water… presumably the existing ecosystem such as it is relies on that humidity and now man is proposing reducing it even further . 

    4. JaggedMetalOs on

      Not these again, there has been so many “revolutionary” water from air machines over the last few decades that you need to assume that any new one is still not going to be efficient enough to be viable until they actually demonstrate it working at scale. 

    5. Norade on

      This is going to steal water that would be deposited elsewhere and impact other areas. It’s better to use cloud seeding over wet areas, make reservoirs, and then pipe that water into dry regions.

    6. External_Peanut_4545 on

      Deserts going from ‘bone dry’ to ‘USB-C powered hydration stations’ was not on my 2025 bingo card, but I’ll take it.

    7. External_Peanut_4545 on

      Deserts going from ‘bone dry’ to ‘USB-C powered hydration stations’ was not on my 2025 bingo card, but I’ll take it.

    11. gc3 on

      This is funny because when I go to my Vegas house I run a humidifier to keep my nostrils from burning. I doubt a dehumidifier would give me enough water to run my humidifier