Water for a Thirsty World

“Close the door, we can’t afford to heat the outside.”
 
“Shut off that light, money doesn’t grow on trees.”
 
“Stop wasting water.  I’m not made out of money”
 
It seems that every child’s first lesson in economics comes in the form of a parent telling them to shut the front door.  This is not a bad thing.
 
 Our parents’ admonition to “stop wasting water (electricity…heat…time…et.al.)” was dead on.  Water is a basic human need.  Yet, despite being a life-assuring requirement, usable water is not a given throughout the world, nor even the United States.  That is why I was excited to read an article about engineers at the University of Texas in Austin who have created a solar-powered technology that absorbs water from the air and turns it into clean water. 

Every elementary school student knows the water cycle.  Evaporation changes liquid water into vapor.  Vapor is a gas which means it expands to fit the space available, so it ascends into the air and moves around with the air currents.  As it gets higher in the atmosphere, the temperatures cool and the vapor, losing heat energy, condenses into clouds.  When the load of water becomes too heavy to be held aloft.  The water then falls in one of many forms of precipitation (rain, snow, sleet, hail, etc.). 
   
There is always water in the atmosphere.  The amount at any one time is only 1/1000 of 1% of the Earth’s total volume of water, but that is still over 3000 cubic miles of water. 
So, water is always around us, whether we can see it, use it or not.  Another thing that is always around is a need for water.  Water is particularly important in times of disaster, water crises, impoverished communities and developing countries.  Cue the research team led by Guihua Yu at the University of Texas-Austin’s Cockrell School of Engineering. 

Yu and his team combined hydrogels into super chemical “sponges.” These hydrogels combined both hydroscopic (water absorbing) and thermal responsive hydrophilicity (the ability to release water with simple heating) materials.  These gel-polymer hybrid creations can extract water from the atmosphere and then release it as clean, usable water when heated (which makes them just the opposite of what happens during the water cycle). 
Yu’s hydrogel creations also work successfully in both humid and dry weather.  This system can be used in small, inexpensive and portable filtration systems which are exactly the kind needed for disaster relief or transient emergencies.  They also avoid heavy energy consumption.  You are not using huge amounts of energy to heat or cool the receptors.
 
“We have developed a completely passive system where all you need to do is leave the hydrogel outside and it will collect water,” said Fei Zhao, a postdoctoral researcher on Yu’s team and co-author of the study. “The collected water will remain stored in the hydrogel until you expose it to sunlight. After about five minutes under natural sunlight, the water releases.”

These hydrogels can produce up to 50 liters per kilogram of hydrogel.  Fifty liters per person per day is the outside estimate of what each human being needs for hydration, food prep and cleaning. 

This is the kind of innovative thinking that comes from free-market economies.  People work best when they know they will profit from their own smart thinking.  They will, however, only profit if they solve a problem, make a better choice, produce a competitive commodity or improve the human condition. 
 
Despite what the current crop of socialists like to say, capitalism is not a dirty word.  In fact, it is the key to mankind’s success.

Hug an inventor and keep the faith.