Penn Engineers Discover a New Class of Materials That Passively Harvest Water from Air
A serendipitous observation in a Chemical Engineering lab at Penn Engineering has led to a surprising discovery: a new class of nanostructured materials that can … Read More ›
Even more surprising: the droplets didn’t evaporate quickly, as thermodynamics would predict.
“According to the curvature and size of the droplets, they should have been evaporating,” says Patel. “But they were not; they remained stable for extended periods.”
With a material that could potentially defy the laws of physics on their hands, Lee and Patel sent their design off to a collaborator to see if their results were replicable.
I really don't like the repeated use of the phrase "defy the laws of physics." That's an extraordinary claim, and it needs extraordinary proof, and the researchers already propose a mechanism by which the droplets remained stable under existing physical laws, namely that they were getting replenished from the nanopores inside the material as fast as evaporation was pulling water out of the droplets.
I recognize the researchers themselves aren't using the phrase, it's the Penn press release organization trying to further drum up interest in the research. But it's a bad framing. You can make it sound interesting without resorting to clickbait techniques like "did our awesome engineers just break the laws of physics??" Hell, the research is interesting enough on its own; passive water collection from the air is revolutionary! No need for editorializing!
Yeah, science communicators need to not evaluate themselves by the same metrics as newspapers and magazines. Getting people to click and share should not be the metric of success.
Yeah, why pretend physics are being broken when we could instead discuss the fact that we're one step closer to having moisture farming as a profession!
Cool, just have to go to Tosche Station to pick up some power converters first.
You can waste time with your friends when your chores are done.
pull water from the air, collect it in pores and release it onto surfaces without the need for any external energy
If this is legit, it's going to be revolutionary.
That seems like it would violate the law of entropy by turning a high entropy state (water vapor mixed into the air) into a lower entropy state (water in liquid form), but I'm probably just missing something.
I don't at all understand why the second law of thermodynamics is being invoked. Nonetheless, capillary condensation is already a well-studied phenomenon. As the scientific article itself notes, the innovation here over traditional capillary condensation would be the ability to easily remove the water once it's condensed.
Re: Entropy:
Yeah that was my thought too. I hope it makes it to actual use cases and not just lab proof of concept.
Recently I found a new class of passive water aggregators in my snack. I call it ,"DO NOT EAT, SILICA"
I have a long distance call from Arakis, the Fremen are on line 1....
Stillsuits incoming.
Please, the stretchy part of my sweatshirt sleeves have done this for years.
So, trees with more steps?
Trees harvest it from the ground, not the air.
Trees absorb MOST of their water through the soil, but are absolutely capable of absorbing water directly into their leaves. Google "Foliar uptake"
I'd recommend reading the article before trying to make a comparison.
When water condenses on surfaces, it usually requires either a drop in temperature or very high humidity levels. Conventional water harvesting methods rely on these principles, often requiring energy input to chill surfaces or a dense fog to form to collect water passively from humid environments. But Lee and Patel’s system works differently.
Isorhermal (unpowered) water condensation from capillary action isn't the interesting part, (and the article title doesn't really make that clear), but the potential ease of water extraction after condensation is interesting - and the original paper makes it clear in the discussion that that part isn't done yet and isn't guaranteed
