It is easy to get despondent about the future and its challenges, especially with the massive amount of change ahead due to climate and weather modifications we are continuing to experience. However, it is good to not give up hope, as science and technology will give us some options.
UC Berkeley’s Omar Yaghi and his colleagues describe the latest version of their water harvester, which can pull more than five cups of water (1.3 liters) from low-humidity air per day for each kilogram (2.2 pounds) of water-absorbing material, a very porous substance called a metal-organic framework or MOF. That is more than the minimum required to stay alive…Even on the driest day in the desert, with an extremely low relative humidity of 7% and temperatures over 80 degrees Fahrenheit, the harvester produced six ounces (0.2 liters) of water per kilogram of MOF per day.
See Research Paper at ACS
From 2014, when Yaghi and team came up with MOF-801 to today, the progress is pretty astonishing. And with time, it is only going to improve. The version 2 of the harvester:
uses solar panels to power fans blowing ambient air over MOF contained within a cartridge so that more of the MOF is exposed to air. The MOF-filled cartridge, about 10 inches square and 5 inches thick, is intersected by two sets of channels: one set for adsorbing water, the other for expelling it to the condenser, allowing continuous cycling throughout the day. The solar panels, attached to batteries so that the harvester can run at night, also power small heaters that drive the water out of the MOF. The productivity of this new water harvester is 10 times the amount harvested by the previous device and 100 times higher than the early proof-of-concept device. No traces of metal or organics have been found in the water.
Berkeley News
It seems these MOFs are pretty magical products. Yaghi has been at work on MOFs since the mid-1990s. Other MOFs can capture carbon dioxide from flue gases, among other things.