Man, I was just thinking that Tatooine moisture farming was finally coming true and everybody else is theorizing about how it will fuck the world up :(
Man, I was just thinking that Tatooine moisture farming was finally coming true and everybody else is theorizing about how it will fuck the world up :(
What if Tattooine is only an arid desert planet because a tech like this got deployed at scale as an alternative to desalination? The tech is undoubtably cool, but if there's one lesson to be...
What if Tattooine is only an arid desert planet because a tech like this got deployed at scale as an alternative to desalination?
The tech is undoubtably cool, but if there's one lesson to be learned from the last 150 years, it's that humans are really bad at considering the long-term externalities.
Diving into the links, from 2023, No input, no energy use, no noise, no moving parts, no maintenance, no waste. Material science is science fiction come true. The guy was part of a trio who won...
Diving into the links, from 2023,
Up to 285 grams of water, or one cup of water, may be gathered per kilogram of the metal-organic framework in a single day. Without replenishment or modification, the MOF can continue to work for numerous cycles over many years. The MOF can be sustainably disassembled and rebuilt in water with no discharge at the end of its useful life.
No input, no energy use, no noise, no moving parts, no maintenance, no waste. Material science is science fiction come true.
The guy was part of a trio who won Nobel prize in 2025 for this material. Water is already life saving, but the fact that another reticular design of MOFs might be able to do passive carbon capture for us might save us all.
Edit: the 2017 Science.org article has all the technical details, for their earlier prototype.
@chocobean - thank you for providing the link to actual technical details. I was getting pretty annoyed at their website for just being what felt to me like IPO-raising marketing fluff with no...
@chocobean - thank you for providing the link to actual technical details. I was getting pretty annoyed at their website for just being what felt to me like IPO-raising marketing fluff with no hard details or evidence. The only thing that kept me searching after that was that the Nobel committee felt the technology was worthy of the prize.
Fundamentally, yes, there is water in any earth air that is above 0% humidity, and yes, there is energy available from the sun in the form of solar thermal or solar photovoltaic, so the concept of getting some water out of the air without grid energy support is valid - but what matters is how much water you can get per unit of time per device (on average) and how big and expensive is this device.
They mention the device that could extract a kiloliter per day is shipping container sized. Ok, fine. But in terms of demonstrated technology, what actual results have they proven?
I've been reading through and finding things like: "the predicted water uptake, or potential harvestable quantity of water, was estimated to be ~0.25 kg water kg–1 MOF, as shown in the upper abscissa of Fig. 2C. Each water-harvesting cycle, ~0.24 liters kg–1 were harvested (Fig. 2D), as determined by integrating the water-harvesting rate."
I'm also finding really frustrating statements like this: "The 1-mm, 3-mm, and 5-mm layers can harvest 0.08, 0.24, and 0.4 liters m–2 per complete water-harvesting cycle, respectively. More than 90% of the initially adsorbed water could be harvested under these conditions." - they are stating results varying from material THICKNESS - without telling us the other 2 dimensions. Ok, so you can get X results from Y thickness - but over how much length and width of material? 1 square meter? 1 square kilometer? It kind of makes a difference.
Something else that would help is data on energy use per liter of water harvested - be it photovoltaic electrical energy or energy used by thermal delta or whatever. That allows for a direct comparison to other established methods which technically work but are not viable in practical terms.
There is also a debunk video by Thunderf00t here which takes a look at this from the perspective of thermodynamics and the need for work to be done - actual detail starts at 3 minutes and 51 seconds (before that is kind of just a rant).
Again, the basic environmental conditions in terms of presence of water and presence of energy ARE THERE. We have water as humidity in the air and we have energy available to be utilized from the sun. Yes, you CAN extract SOME AMOUNT of water in that situation... the question is can you get any practical, useful amount for the resources spent in making the device and the mass and surface area used.
Overall this smells to me like a technically viable concept that does not, or does not yet, have any practical viability, which is now being taken advantage of in a way that feels like a marketing prelude to raising a bunch of IPO money. Not to make a working product, but to make a working fortune. Reminds me of Theranos.
I wasn't able to read the entire 2017 report, and I'm not sure if they've made better breakthrough after that, but one of my thoughts is that maybe they chose death valley as a test site not...
I wasn't able to read the entire 2017 report, and I'm not sure if they've made better breakthrough after that, but one of my thoughts is that maybe they chose death valley as a test site not because they wanted to show it works even in death valley, but that it only works there. They need the vast temperature differential for this kind of condensation process, and especially need the ultra high heat during the day to extract water back out of the material.
There are no free lunches in thermodynamics, as the video says
While I get this isn't the whole of what you're getting at, I can clarify this part: The other two dimensions are embedded in the "liters m-2" unit, that's liters per square meter.
While I get this isn't the whole of what you're getting at, I can clarify this part:
"The 1-mm, 3-mm, and 5-mm layers can harvest 0.08, 0.24, and 0.4 liters m–2 per complete water-harvesting cycle, respectively. More than 90% of the initially adsorbed water could be harvested under these conditions." - they are stating results varying from material THICKNESS - without telling us the other 2 dimensions.
The other two dimensions are embedded in the "liters m-2" unit, that's liters per square meter.
Ok, thank you. Some of their unit notation in the article was set up in such a way as to be somewhat ambiguous. I can see that as representing square meters logically, though it reads like it has...
Ok, thank you. Some of their unit notation in the article was set up in such a way as to be somewhat ambiguous. I can see that as representing square meters logically, though it reads like it has been poorly translated - especially for a scientific article where one (I would hope) would wish to be clear and unambiguous with language.
"...layers can harvest 0.08, 0.24, and 0.4 liters m–2 per complete water-harvesting cycle" would have more logically been
"...layers can harvest 0.08, 0.24, and 0.4 liters PER m^2 per complete water-harvesting cycle (bold added to highlight change)
Science improving things we’ve done, or known how to do but not as well, in one form or another for generations is fun to read about. Assuming it works and is commercially viable, I wonder if it...
Science improving things we’ve done, or known how to do but not as well, in one form or another for generations is fun to read about.
Assuming it works and is commercially viable, I wonder if it could be used in a desperate effort to keep farming in places we probably shouldn’t have been. And then I imagine all sorts of neat externalities like a rain shadow but instead of being caused by a mountain it’s caused by Sietch Tabr’s wind trap.
I've honestly wondered about this sort of thing too. Does stuff like that at scale end up changing local climate or have larger impacts? I've wondered about wind farms too. There has to be some...
I've honestly wondered about this sort of thing too. Does stuff like that at scale end up changing local climate or have larger impacts? I've wondered about wind farms too. There has to be some measureable decrease in the wind speed through the farm and does that have any downstream impacts on anything? It's extracting energy after all so something downstream has to get less energy input.
I haven't really seen any discussions around this too (tbf I haven't looked that hard either).
There are discussions now and then but they all end up at the same core problem. We as a worldwide collective have allowed fossil fuels to wildly affect the climate and weather patterns, and...
There are discussions now and then but they all end up at the same core problem.
We as a worldwide collective have allowed fossil fuels to wildly affect the climate and weather patterns, and continue to do so,without requiring any kind of studies on the downstream impacts.
Now suddenly the "drill, baby, drill" collective poses these questions in bad faith because of course there will be measurable impacts. The goal should be to minimize the effects, but we have no baseline. Any attempts to make a baseline are met with an infinite rabbit hole.
I'm definitely not a "drill, baby, drill" person and if I came off that way, it was not my intention. I, in no way, said or meant to imply we should stop these forms of energy generation, it's...
I'm definitely not a "drill, baby, drill" person and if I came off that way, it was not my intention. I, in no way, said or meant to imply we should stop these forms of energy generation, it's merely an academic question out of sheer curiousity.
And it feels disingenious for someone to say, well we've let fossil fuels screw up the planet. It really feels like a "well they did that, so we can do this" which is just not at all where my question came from. I'm purely curious about if there's been discussion or studies around the downstream effects.
Yes, yes it does. Local nighttime temperatures increase around windfarms, both increasing local average temperature and reducing day-night temperature swings. Generally considered to be worth the...
There has to be some measureable decrease in the wind speed through the farm and does that have any downstream impacts on anything?
Yes, yes it does. Local nighttime temperatures increase around windfarms, both increasing local average temperature and reducing day-night temperature swings. Generally considered to be worth the tradeoff, but not by everyone, and details are still being researched. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243511830446X
Awesome thank you for the link! Interestingly I would expect the lower wind speeds downstream of the turbines to cause the temperature rise, but the article states it's the mixing of the air at...
Awesome thank you for the link! Interestingly I would expect the lower wind speeds downstream of the turbines to cause the temperature rise, but the article states it's the mixing of the air at the boundary layer which makes sense, I just hadn't considered it. Since it's heat redistribution, I would imagine it's still a net win in terms of the overall climate (via reducing fossil fuel dependence).
My gut tells me it would be negligible just because of the size difference between the wind farm and the amount of atmosphere above it. Feels like we’re barely skimming from the edge. I wouldn’t...
My gut tells me it would be negligible just because of the size difference between the wind farm and the amount of atmosphere above it. Feels like we’re barely skimming from the edge. I wouldn’t think they would be more disruptive than a tall forest, or a city.
I did a little napkin math, because I was also trying to picture the scale of water extraction vs. The potential that's talked about for these machines. The average per capita residential water...
I did a little napkin math, because I was also trying to picture the scale of water extraction vs. The potential that's talked about for these machines.
The average per capita residential water use in Canada is 200 L/day (source, statcan website). I think it'd be safe to round down to 100 L for someone trying to conserve water more, plus it's a simple number.
At 20% relative humidity and, say a balmy 30°C, the air holds 6 g/m³ water (source, noaa calculator)
So each day, 1 person would need all of the moisture from 17,000 m³ of air.
But, that's really not a lot of air. At its lower point, the troposphere is about 9 km high at mid-latitudes (source, noaa). So, 2 m² would contain more than that one person needs (well, ignoring the all the complexity of the lower density, and different temperatures, etc. at higher altitudes)
This was really handwavy and simple, but it at least helped me picture what 1000 L could mean in terms of drawing water from the air vs. the scale of the atmosphere. Also, sorry, I closed the sources and didn't save the links before writing this :)
That's a good line of thought with the city buildings! I hadn't considered that. Initially I would think that the conversion to electricity makes it different, but I guess the building absorbing...
That's a good line of thought with the city buildings! I hadn't considered that. Initially I would think that the conversion to electricity makes it different, but I guess the building absorbing the impact and dissapating it into the ground is basically the same mechanism.
Man, I was just thinking that Tatooine moisture farming was finally coming true and everybody else is theorizing about how it will fuck the world up :(
What if Tattooine is only an arid desert planet because a tech like this got deployed at scale as an alternative to desalination?
The tech is undoubtably cool, but if there's one lesson to be learned from the last 150 years, it's that humans are really bad at considering the long-term externalities.
Why not both?! :)
Diving into the links, from 2023,
No input, no energy use, no noise, no moving parts, no maintenance, no waste. Material science is science fiction come true.
The guy was part of a trio who won Nobel prize in 2025 for this material. Water is already life saving, but the fact that another reticular design of MOFs might be able to do passive carbon capture for us might save us all.
Edit: the 2017 Science.org article has all the technical details, for their earlier prototype.
@chocobean - thank you for providing the link to actual technical details. I was getting pretty annoyed at their website for just being what felt to me like IPO-raising marketing fluff with no hard details or evidence. The only thing that kept me searching after that was that the Nobel committee felt the technology was worthy of the prize.
Fundamentally, yes, there is water in any earth air that is above 0% humidity, and yes, there is energy available from the sun in the form of solar thermal or solar photovoltaic, so the concept of getting some water out of the air without grid energy support is valid - but what matters is how much water you can get per unit of time per device (on average) and how big and expensive is this device.
They mention the device that could extract a kiloliter per day is shipping container sized. Ok, fine. But in terms of demonstrated technology, what actual results have they proven?
I've been reading through and finding things like: "the predicted water uptake, or potential harvestable quantity of water, was estimated to be ~0.25 kg water kg–1 MOF, as shown in the upper abscissa of Fig. 2C. Each water-harvesting cycle, ~0.24 liters kg–1 were harvested (Fig. 2D), as determined by integrating the water-harvesting rate."
I'm also finding really frustrating statements like this: "The 1-mm, 3-mm, and 5-mm layers can harvest 0.08, 0.24, and 0.4 liters m–2 per complete water-harvesting cycle, respectively. More than 90% of the initially adsorbed water could be harvested under these conditions." - they are stating results varying from material THICKNESS - without telling us the other 2 dimensions. Ok, so you can get X results from Y thickness - but over how much length and width of material? 1 square meter? 1 square kilometer? It kind of makes a difference.
Something else that would help is data on energy use per liter of water harvested - be it photovoltaic electrical energy or energy used by thermal delta or whatever. That allows for a direct comparison to other established methods which technically work but are not viable in practical terms.
There is also a debunk video by Thunderf00t here which takes a look at this from the perspective of thermodynamics and the need for work to be done - actual detail starts at 3 minutes and 51 seconds (before that is kind of just a rant).
Again, the basic environmental conditions in terms of presence of water and presence of energy ARE THERE. We have water as humidity in the air and we have energy available to be utilized from the sun. Yes, you CAN extract SOME AMOUNT of water in that situation... the question is can you get any practical, useful amount for the resources spent in making the device and the mass and surface area used.
Overall this smells to me like a technically viable concept that does not, or does not yet, have any practical viability, which is now being taken advantage of in a way that feels like a marketing prelude to raising a bunch of IPO money. Not to make a working product, but to make a working fortune. Reminds me of Theranos.
I wasn't able to read the entire 2017 report, and I'm not sure if they've made better breakthrough after that, but one of my thoughts is that maybe they chose death valley as a test site not because they wanted to show it works even in death valley, but that it only works there. They need the vast temperature differential for this kind of condensation process, and especially need the ultra high heat during the day to extract water back out of the material.
There are no free lunches in thermodynamics, as the video says
While I get this isn't the whole of what you're getting at, I can clarify this part:
The other two dimensions are embedded in the "liters m-2" unit, that's liters per square meter.
Ok, thank you. Some of their unit notation in the article was set up in such a way as to be somewhat ambiguous. I can see that as representing square meters logically, though it reads like it has been poorly translated - especially for a scientific article where one (I would hope) would wish to be clear and unambiguous with language.
"...layers can harvest 0.08, 0.24, and 0.4 liters m–2 per complete water-harvesting cycle" would have more logically been
"...layers can harvest 0.08, 0.24, and 0.4 liters PER m^2 per complete water-harvesting cycle (bold added to highlight change)
Science improving things we’ve done, or known how to do but not as well, in one form or another for generations is fun to read about.
Assuming it works and is commercially viable, I wonder if it could be used in a desperate effort to keep farming in places we probably shouldn’t have been. And then I imagine all sorts of neat externalities like a rain shadow but instead of being caused by a mountain it’s caused by Sietch Tabr’s wind trap.
I wonder if this can have any kind of impact on weather, whether negatively or positively, intentionally or unintentionally.
I've honestly wondered about this sort of thing too. Does stuff like that at scale end up changing local climate or have larger impacts? I've wondered about wind farms too. There has to be some measureable decrease in the wind speed through the farm and does that have any downstream impacts on anything? It's extracting energy after all so something downstream has to get less energy input.
I haven't really seen any discussions around this too (tbf I haven't looked that hard either).
There are discussions now and then but they all end up at the same core problem.
We as a worldwide collective have allowed fossil fuels to wildly affect the climate and weather patterns, and continue to do so,without requiring any kind of studies on the downstream impacts.
Now suddenly the "drill, baby, drill" collective poses these questions in bad faith because of course there will be measurable impacts. The goal should be to minimize the effects, but we have no baseline. Any attempts to make a baseline are met with an infinite rabbit hole.
I'm definitely not a "drill, baby, drill" person and if I came off that way, it was not my intention. I, in no way, said or meant to imply we should stop these forms of energy generation, it's merely an academic question out of sheer curiousity.
And it feels disingenious for someone to say, well we've let fossil fuels screw up the planet. It really feels like a "well they did that, so we can do this" which is just not at all where my question came from. I'm purely curious about if there's been discussion or studies around the downstream effects.
Yes, yes it does. Local nighttime temperatures increase around windfarms, both increasing local average temperature and reducing day-night temperature swings. Generally considered to be worth the tradeoff, but not by everyone, and details are still being researched.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243511830446X
Awesome thank you for the link! Interestingly I would expect the lower wind speeds downstream of the turbines to cause the temperature rise, but the article states it's the mixing of the air at the boundary layer which makes sense, I just hadn't considered it. Since it's heat redistribution, I would imagine it's still a net win in terms of the overall climate (via reducing fossil fuel dependence).
My gut tells me it would be negligible just because of the size difference between the wind farm and the amount of atmosphere above it. Feels like we’re barely skimming from the edge. I wouldn’t think they would be more disruptive than a tall forest, or a city.
I did a little napkin math, because I was also trying to picture the scale of water extraction vs. The potential that's talked about for these machines.
The average per capita residential water use in Canada is 200 L/day (source, statcan website). I think it'd be safe to round down to 100 L for someone trying to conserve water more, plus it's a simple number.
At 20% relative humidity and, say a balmy 30°C, the air holds 6 g/m³ water (source, noaa calculator)
So each day, 1 person would need all of the moisture from 17,000 m³ of air.
But, that's really not a lot of air. At its lower point, the troposphere is about 9 km high at mid-latitudes (source, noaa). So, 2 m² would contain more than that one person needs (well, ignoring the all the complexity of the lower density, and different temperatures, etc. at higher altitudes)
This was really handwavy and simple, but it at least helped me picture what 1000 L could mean in terms of drawing water from the air vs. the scale of the atmosphere. Also, sorry, I closed the sources and didn't save the links before writing this :)
That's a good line of thought with the city buildings! I hadn't considered that. Initially I would think that the conversion to electricity makes it different, but I guess the building absorbing the impact and dissapating it into the ground is basically the same mechanism.