Water From Air

Everyone needs clean water for drinking and cooking.

The brainchild of Technion Architecture and Building Planning grad students Joseph Cory and Eyal Malka, “WatAir,” is an inverted pyramid array of panels that collects dew from the air and turns it into fresh water in almost any climate.

Inspired by the dew-collecting properties of leaves, one 315 sq ft unit can extract a minimum of 48 liters of fresh water from the air each day. Depending on the number of collectors used, an unlimited daily supply of water could be produced even in remote and polluted places.

According to Cory, WatAir can be easily incorporated into both rural and urban landscapes because it has a relatively small base. Its vertical and diagonal design utilizes gravity to increase the collection areas. The panels are flexible and easy to collapse when not in use, and provide shelter from rain and heat and play areas for children.

Source
The most common way of producing fresh water in dry coastal areas is desalination by pressure driven membrane separation. But that method is very energy intensive and expensive--suitable for Dubai and other oil-rich emirates, but not available to the world's poor.

One key to condensing water from the atmosphere, is to be able to cool your condensing surface below the dew point of the air. Another important point is the nature of the condensing surface--to encourage droplet formation and discourage re-evaporation. Thirdly, the condenser must move the droplets together into a collectible quantity of water. WatAir appears to have addressed these concerns, according to the reports.