Shortages of drinking water and droughts are not just a problem today, but they are growing, and rapidly. According to the United Nations, 2.3 billion people live in countries with water scarcity, 733 million of them in countries with high and critical water scarcity. It is already important to reuse and save water, but science must also find ways to regenerate drinking water.
A promising possibility or idea is the water vapor over the oceans. Here the supplies are de facto unlimited and how Science Alert reported, describes an in Nature published new study on how to create “harvesting structures” to convert this vapor into potable water.
This is how fresh water could be created over the sea by means of humidity
Water demand is increasing
“Eventually we will have to find a way to increase the supply of fresh water, as the conservation and recycling of water from existing sources, while important, is not enough to meet people’s needs,” explains civil and environmental engineer Praveen Kumar , one of the authors of the study. “We believe our newly proposed method can do this on a large scale.” The study, titled “Increasing Freshwater Supply for Sustainable Management of Global Water Security on a Large Scale,” proposes structures a good 200 meters wide and 100 meters high (that would be roughly the size of a cruise ship) that mimic the natural water cycle by containing water transport, condense and collect.
To put it simply, moist air is collected above the sea surface, conveyed to the coast and condensed there. The energy required for this could be obtained from wind or solar power. The authors of the study measured the humidity in 14 locations around the world and calculated that such a system could cover the daily water needs of half a million people on average.
“It hasn’t happened before, and I think it’s because researchers are so focused on land-based solutions – but our study shows that there are indeed other possibilities,” said Atmospheric scientist Francina Dominguez.
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