Device that can extract 1,000 liters of clean water a day from desert air revealed by 2025 Nobel Prize winner — claimed to work in desert air with 20% humidity or lower, delivering off-grid ‘personalized water’

Atmospheric Water harvesting tech from Atoco — Yaghi with compact prototype (Image credit: Atoco)

A 2025 Nobel Prize winner has set up a company to commercialize a machine that it claims can pull 1,000 liters (about 264 US Gal) of drinkable water a day from the thin air. As Interesting Engineering reports, Professor Omar Yaghi, a chemist at the University of California, Berkeley, invented a machine that works effectively in desert air with 20% humidity or lower. As a self-contained off-grid device, it has the potential to provide relief to regions scattered around the globe, where water shortages are persistent or have been precipitated by a natural disaster.

Yaghi’s company, Atoco, also sees a market in “personalized water,” much like where households generate their own off-grid power from wind or solar. Prototypes have been successfully tested in places as arid as Death Valley. The 1,000 liters a day machine is far bigger than the social media prototype machine image we see alongside the Professor in the desert, at around 20ft in length, or the size of a shipping container.

Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs)

The science behind this new clean water harvesting machine is based on reticular chemistry, one of Yaghi’s specialist areas. In particular, the device is packed with Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs), which are synthetic porous materials engineered at the molecular level to have huge surface areas. A few grams of an MOF can have a surface area equivalent to a football arena, according to the source.

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With this incredibly large surface area in such a compact form, the MOF is adept at collecting water from the air and condensing it to a liquid. Yaghi’s mechanism can do this without a power source. It uses the wind and air for water input, then the sun to drive condensation and evaporative action. It is worth repeating – the invention can operate as a self-contained, entirely off-grid device.

Atoco also touts the availability of on-grid solutions, though.

Inspired by hardship

The MOF Water Harvester device was inspired by Yaghi’s personal history, growing up in a refugee community in Jordan, where his family would listen out for the arrival of the water truck, hoping to beat the rush to fill their life-sustaining containers. The UN has been warning about water insecurity, or even water bankruptcy, for years, so inventions like this could have sizable positive impacts for humanity.

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Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.

41 Comments Comment from the forums

eichwana

Moisture farming has arrived
Reply
jp7189

I love to see these kinds of articles!
Reply
QuarterSwede

This is super interesting. It’s kind of like a heat pump in that where we think there is no moisture or heat left, there is. We just need to figure out how to move it from one place to another. Brilliant work here.
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sygreenblum

This would be great but there are a few vague details here. Like cost of unit and at what humidity this 20' device achieves 1,000 liters per day. Just stating it can work at under 20 percent humidity, almost certainly doesn't mean it can achieve 1,000 liters per day at low humidity. There are already devices like this for off grid use but they are pretty expensive.

Not trying to be a hater but I get really annoyed with Interesting Engineering click bait titles that are overhyped at best and complete and utter nonsense at the worst. Not that this is one of them, but they have a very long history of clickbait BS.
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bit_user

sygreenblum said:
Not trying to be a hater but I get really annoyed with Interesting Engineering click bait titles that are overhyped at best
Agreed. There's usually a catch, somewhere.

He did win a Nobel prize in chemistry, for his work on the same kind of Metal Organic Frameworks this uses, so I assume the science is sound. However, I have to wonder about stuff like its susceptibility to clogging with dust, which seems to be an issue in highly arid regions. If the amount of surface area is such a key to the device's operation, wouldn't dust prove to be a fatal flaw? Yes, you can add dust filters, but can you filter enough of the really small particles without restricting airflow too much, and then what of the practical issues surrounding either cleaning or replacement of those dust filters?

Another thought I have is about the energy inputs needed to manufacture the material. Maybe it can operate on solar energy, once fully assembled, but the manufacturing inputs might be fairly large and you might need to change the active material somewhat regularly.

Even if it has a couple of drawbacks, that's not to say it's worthless. Just, maybe not quite such a miracle machine as the article makes it sound like.
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rob1960

Indeed, and if it takes a shipping container sized unit to extract 1000 litres then presumably the little unit in the photo is unlikely to be able to extract even the necessary 3 litres or so per day for a single human to survive at 40 degrees C.
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JohnyFin

Scam. Short answer.
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bill001g

In some ways a better article than most click bait. They at least have direct links to the research papers this is based on. Not that a normal person not in the field can even think to read it.

What is interesting is the paper came out 4 years ago. This means companies that are in this type of industry and can understand this document must have some reason to not be trying to make money on it. There is actually a massive market for this type of device and if it was viable there would be some company advertising their solution even it was years away.

It is likely there is some technical limitation that is well known to people in the field that the authors of the paper just pretend does not exist.
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drea.drechsler

Based on a little research, a water plant would need at least 500 metric tons of MOF material to produce 1000 liters of water from 20% desert air daily under optimistic conditions, but conservatively 4000 metric tons would be needed.

The device shown in the picture is simply not capable of that level of production, although it might be adequate for personal survival. I'd like to know it's actual daily output instead of the crazy claims being made.
Reply
USAFRet

drea.drechsler said:
Based on a little research, a water plant would need at least 500 metric tons of MOF material to produce 1000 liters of water from 20% desert air daily under optimistic conditions, but conservatively 4000 metric tons would be needed.

The device shown in the picture is simply not capable of that level of production, although it might be adequate for personal survival. I'd like to know it's actual daily output instead of the crazy claims being made.
"The 1,000 liters a day machine is far bigger than the social media prototype machine image we see alongside the Professor in the desert, at around 20ft in length, or the size of a shipping container."
Reply

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