Water Is in the Air

Zero Mass Water is active in Kenya, South Africa and Australia, where it has partnered with the Australian Renewable Energy Agency to set up a demonstration project involving 150 hydropanels in schools, farms, homes and water-stressed communities.

These successful innovators demonstrate the kind of out-of-the-box thinking that UN Environment hopes will abound at the fourth UN Environment Assembly. The motto for the meeting is: think beyond prevailing patterns and live within sustainable limits.

In Kenya, Majik Water uses non-toxic desiccants, like silica gel, to capture water from the air. Air is pulled into the device by a solar-powered fan and the desiccant absorbs the water. Solar energy is then used to heat the desiccant and release water vapour, which is then condensed and filtered with activated carbon.

The proof-of-concept prototype generates 10 litres of water per day and was shortlisted for the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Africa Prize for Engineering Innovationin November 2018.

One of Majik Water’s founders, Clare Sewell, says that in the short term, water-from-air technologies are, and should be, a niche solution to be used when clean drinking water from natural sources is not readily available.

“The problem is that, increasingly, people are suffering from drought, or their water is contaminated with items that are dangerous but expensive to remove from the water, such as the high fluoride contamination in parts of Kenya. This means there are large water-stressed swathes of the country where organizations will not drill boreholes because the water does not meet World Health Organization standards,” she said.

“It’s in these more niche drought and contamination situations where water-from-air is really useful and makes economic sense,” she says. “As the cost of producing water from air drops—which is what we are seeking to do with our own technology prototype—this will increase the situations where it makes economic sense.”

Sewell and co-founders Beth Koigi and Anastasia Kaschenko, a 2018 finalist in UN Environment’s Young Champions of the Earth, met while doing a course on climate change at Singularity University at the United States’ National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Ames Research Center in California.

Sewell says Koigi was already involved in a water filtration business in Nairobi, but when the main dam ran out of water, she realized access to water was a bigger issue than cleaning dirty water. This inspired the new project.

Hertz places WeDew firmly among efforts being made to repair the damage we have already done to the natural world.

“We need to move beyond sustainability to a regenerative and restorative future that comes from abundance rather than a scarcity model… In particular, we need additional decarbonization strategies if we are to save the planet from ecological genocide,” he says.

Sewell believes climate volatility will continue to drive research into water-from-air technologies.

“On a medium- to long-term basis, we absolutely believe that climate change will cause increasing water stress across the globe … So we believe that innovation and investment in this space will grow.”

Ahead of the United Nations Environment Assembly next March, UN Environment is urging people to Think Beyond and Live Within. Join the debate on social media using #SolveDifferent to share your stories and see what others are doing to ensure a sustainable future for our planet.

*SOURCE: UN Environment. Go to ORIGINAL 2018 Human Wrongs Watch