A simple device that can capture its own weight in water from fresh air and then release that water when warmed by sunlight could provide a secure new source of drinking water in remote arid regions, new research from KAUST (King Abdullah University of Science & Technology) suggests.
At the heart of the device is the cheap, stable, nontoxic salt, calcium chloride. This deliquescent salt has such a high affinity for water that it will absorb so much vapor from the surrounding air that eventually a pool of liquid forms.
The full research paper is available on-line.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 09 2018, @02:26PM
clouds do fly over the deserts, and there is limited mixing of the different layers of air.
it sometimes rains over a desert, but the water droplets evaporate before they hit the ground (this is especially fun in US deserts, where sometimes the mesa formations get wet on top, but everything else around them stays dry).
in any case, if you remove water from the air while it's going over the desert, there are ways for the water vapor concentration to go back up to the ~20% or whatever it is in that particular desert: ultimately, it will rain less wherever those desert-passing clouds did turn into proper rain.