Researchers Developing Method To ‘Harvest’ Drinking Water From Air: IIT-Guwahati

Guwahati: Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati (IIT-G) researchers said on Tuesday that they have developed novel materials that can efficiently harvest water from humid air, reported news agency IANS.

With ever-increasing water scarcity across the globe, there have been several attempts to collect and conserve water through non-traditional methods. Scientists have often turned to nature to design water harvesting ways.

“Such water-harvesting techniques use the concept of hydrophobicity or water-repelling nature of some materials,” Associate Professor, Chemistry department and Centre of Nanotechnology, IIT Guwahati, Uttam Manna said via a statement.

The research team has apparently used the concept of chemically patterned SLIPS for the first time. By doing this, they effectively harvested water from moist air, which was revealed in a study published in the journal The Royal Society of Chemistry.

The researchers produced a patterned hydrophilic SLIP by spraying a sponge-like porous polymeric material on top of a simple A4 printer paper, the agency said.

“In the past geometries of Rice leaves and cacti are associated with ‘Slippery Liquid-Infused Porous Surface(s)’ or SLIPS to improve the water harvesting performance,” the researchers wrote.