Author(s)

Shuai Yuan, Songjing Li, Zhiyang Yu

Corresponding Author

Songjing Li

Abstract

Water is of vital importance for all species including mankind. In recent years water shortage has aroused wide concern because it is also the root of many other serious social problems, such as poverty, health problems, and national security. Water harvesting from air has long been seen as a potential solution to address this crisis. Traditional method based on air refrigeration can yield considerable water production while at the cost of tremendous electricity consumption, thus not eco-friendly. Recent studies focus on the adsorption-desorption cycle of substances with high water uptake capability, such as metal-organic frameworks (MoFs), which can exploit low grade heat resources, mainly sunlight, thus requiring no extra power input. While the working cycle of this method has been proved time consuming, typically for hours. Here a compromising low energy-consuming solution is proposed to shorten the time span of a single cycle by using ceramic heater and semiconductor chilling plate powered by solar cells. Results show that the new solution can efficiently shorten the duration of this process, thus promoting the total yield of water harvesting equipment.

Keywords

Water harvesting, Solar cell, Metal-organic framework.