4 companies with solutions to produce water from thin air
Because only breathing air is so 20th century
Drinking water is still a problem on this planet. According to the U.N., “in 2020, two billion people live without safely managed drinking water services.” A situation with dramatic consequences, as “829,000 people die annually from diseases directly attributable to unsafe water, inadequate sanitation, and poor hygiene practices.”
Although the situation has improved significantly since 2000, with 2 billion people gaining access to safely managed water services, “122 million people still collect drinking water directly from rivers, lakes, and other surface water sources,” UNICEF notes.
And many experts predict that global warming and climate change could make matters worst, leading to a “water crisis” and increasing water scarcity in many places, with dire consequences for populations and cultures.
But the situation could also improve, thanks to innovation and advances in the materials and energy domains. So-called “Atmospheric Water Generators” (AWG) — devices that use electricity to harvest water from the air — have been around for at least a decade and are becoming increasingly efficient. Other "renewable water" solutions have recently emerged and look very promising. They allow water to be harvested from an inexhaustible source and are powered only by renewable energy (mostly from the sun).
Simply put, the difference between the two types of systems comes down to "passive condensation vs. active condensation", with the latter requiring additional energy to operate. Either way, there are solutions for turning the air around us into clean, drinkable water. These are some of the leading companies in the field.
1. Source (renewable)
Source is an Arizona-based company that has created “the world’s first renewable drinking water system”: off-grid hydropanels that only use the power of the sun to extract clean drinking water from the air.
The process works in 3 steps: “Fans draw in ambient air and push it through a hygroscopic, or water-absorbing material, that traps water vapor from the air. The water vapor is extracted and passively condenses into a liquid that is collected in a reservoir. Minerals are added to make perfect drinking water.” The water produced is free from contaminants and “meets or exceeds the water quality standards in the Safe Drinking Water Act and the FDA standards for an approved source for bottled water.”
A standard installation is 2 hydropanels, each the size of a big TV, and costs between $5,500 and $6,500 in the U.S. It can produce up to 6 liters of drinking water per day.
Source’s hydropanels have been installed in 50 countries all around the world, including by major international brands, from Patagonia’s offering free water in its flagship store in Honolulu, Hawaï, to Starbuck installing 30 hydropanels in East Timor, Indonesia, to provide clean water to coffee growers. In January 2023, global hospitality leader Accor announced it will bring Source bottled drinking water to prominent hotels in Singapore.
2. Uravu (renewable)
In India, the start-up Uravu Labs is on a mission “to make 100% renewable water available and affordable to all in a few years.” It has raised a total of $2M in funding over 2 rounds, the last one in August 2022.
Uravu is developing a system that produces potable water from the air, consisting of a solar heat unit, a thermal storage unit, a condenser unit, and two desiccant units, among others. The system ensures that the condenser is near 100% capacity while producing water from the air throughout the day and the night (the whole process is detailed here).
The company already delivered a five liters per day model and got pilot orders from customers in the brewing or real estate industries. Insisting on how scalable its solution is, Uravu intends to create bigger harvesters, gradually scaling up to 200 and 2,000 liters per day (LPD) by the end of 2023. The 200 LPD model will target places “where renewable water is generated on-spot and water is consumed there itself, like residential/offices/hospitality,” while the bigger models will be aiming at industries, especially the beverage industry using water to produce other beverage products.
3. Watergen (electrical)
Watergen was founded in Israel in 2009 and launched its first atmospheric water generator in 2012.
The company has developed a unique, patent-protected, and energy-efficient technology to extract water from the air using heat exchange and condensation, for 7-15 cents per liter (depending on local electricity costs). “Purification and filtration systems combined with a UV lamp and low-temperature water circulation ensure clean, safe and tasty drinking water that complies with all international standards,” Watergen emphasizes.
It offers a full range of electric water harvesting devices, whether for home use (Genny, producing up to 30 liters per day), or commercial use, from the GEN-M1 producing 220 liters (58 gallons) per day and consuming 2.2 kW, to the GEN-L, able to pump up to 6,000 liters (1,585 gallons) of water from the air per day, with a power use of 60 kW/h.
4. Akvo (electric)
In India, Akvo Atmospheric Water Systems was founded in 2016 to develop air-to-water systems.
It commercializes a full range of half a dozen Atmospheric Water Generators, from the Akvo Pod targeting home users (able to produce up to 50 liters of water per day) to much bigger solutions. Among them, the Akvo Water Block, “a modular and scalable water supply system,” is designed to facilitate large water supply needs, each block being able to generate up to 500 liters of water daily, using 4 kW of power (at 30°C and 80% Relative Humidity).
Some promising research
Water Generators are gaining traction. According to Straits Research, “the Atmospheric Water Generator Market Size is projected to reach $7.76 Billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 18.35%” (compared to $1.6 Billion in 2021). New models, including some designed for domestic use, are appearing and becoming more affordable. For instance, in 2022, the American company Kara Water launched Kara Pure, a $3,799 domestic Air-to-Water dispenser that makes up to 10 liters (2.5 gal) of alkaline water per day.
Butt the real challenge is to produce water without using electricity. The good news is, on top of existing solutions created by the start-ups mentioned above, researchers all around the world are making significant progress to develop innovative, efficient, and sustainable solutions to harvest water from the air.
In 2020, the National University of Singapore presented “a polymer–metal-organic framework that provides simultaneous and uninterrupted sorption and release of atmospheric water.” The passive system, which requires no additional energy to work, demonstrated continuous water delivery for 1440 hours, “producing 6 g of fresh water per gram of sorbent at 90% relative humidity.”
In Switzerland in 2021, researchers at ETH Zurich presented a technology allowing to harvest water 24 hours a day, “with no energy input, even under the blazing sun.” The device consists of a specially coated glass pane that reflects solar radiation and radiates away its own heat. On the underside of the pane, water vapor from the air condenses into water. Under ideal conditions, the device could harvest “up to 0.53 decilitres (approximately 1.8 fluid ounces) of water per square meter of pane surface per hour.”
In 2021 in the U.S., a research team from X (Alphabet Group, Project H2E) presented their findings on improving access to clean drinking water, along with a prototype of an off-grid device able to harvest water from the air using only sunlight The device could output 150 mL/h/m2 of water — “enough water to keep a person hydrated in many dry places.”
The same year, GE was awarded a four-year, $14.3 million project by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) to develop and design “a highly compact, portable device that literally can produce clean, safe water out of thin air,” able to produce enough daily water for 150 troops.
In 2022, a three-month trial in Saudi Arabia demonstrated that a system based on layers of hydrogel placed under photovoltaic panels could extract water from the air without using any electricity. The water was used to irrigate a small patch of plants.
The bottom line
Whether based on solar energy or requiring an electric plug, today’s available solutions are already making a difference, as they can bring clean and drinking water where it’s needed. At the very least, these solutions help to reduce the carbon footprint associated with water distribution and dramatically decrease the associated waste. “A single Hydropanel eliminates the need for 54,000 single-use plastic water bottles over its 15-year lifespan,” Source notes.
For the coming years and decades, the current advance of research on the sustainable harvesting of water from the air using renewable energy allows us to be optimistic about our ability to tackle the water scarcity problem.