We built an autonomous, off-grid water harvester that operates under extreme desert conditions, w/ some days during field testing seeing midday temperatures reach ~50 °C, RH drop close to 5%, and very high wind speeds.

This is also a nice example of how a material discovered in the lab can be translated into an actual working device in the field.

Key takeaway: While it may seem that high desert temperatures would lead to rapid heating of the MOF (which is important for desorbing the adsorbed water), this is not always true. Under such harsh desert conditions, we found that windblown sand attenuates the solar irradiance reaching the device, while high wind speeds can also increase heat loss. This can lead to slower heating and, consequently, a slower rate of water collection, which can reduce the total amount of water collected over the course of a day....

Also sharing some videos showing the weather conditions, the device generating water, and my wonderful colleague Daniel drinking that water...

Videos are available in the online version: https://www.nakulrampal.xyz/blog/water-harvester.html

To know more, please have a look at our preprint: ChemRxiv

A big thank you to Ali Alawadhi and Daniel Ahn, and to Prof. Yaghi for his mentorship. This was made possible because of generous funding from the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) and the Bakar Institute of Digital Materials for the Planet (BIDMaP).