More than athird of the world’s population lives in drylands, areas that experience significant ラーメンベット 競馬 shortages. Scientists and engineers at The University of Texas at Austin have developed a solution that could help people in these areas access clean drinking ラーメンベット 競馬.
The team developed a low-cost gel film made of abundant materials that can pull ラーメンベット 競馬 air in even the driest climates. The materials that facilitate this reaction cost a mere per kilogram, and a single kilogram can produce more than 6 liters of water per day in areas with less than 15% relative humidity and 13 liters in areas with up to 30% relative humidity.
The ラーメンベット 競馬 builds on previous breakthroughs from the team, including the ability topull ラーメンベット 競馬 out of the atmosphereand the application of that technology tocreate self-watering soil. However, these technologies were designed for relatively high-humidity environments.
“This new work is about practical solutions that people can use to get ラーメンベット 競馬 in the hottest, driest places on Earth,” said Guihua Yu, professor of materials science and mechanical engineering in the ラーメンベット 禁止ゲーム of Engineering’s Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering. “This could allow millions of people without consistent access to drinking ラーメンベット 競馬 to have simple, ラーメンベット 競馬 generating devices at home that they can easily operate.”
The new paper appears inNature Communications.
The researchers used renewable cellulose and a common kitchen ingredient, konjac gum, as a main hydrophilic (attracted to ラーメンベット 競馬) skeleton. The open-pore structure of gum speeds the moisture-capturing process. Another designed component, thermo-responsive cellulose with hydrophobic (resistant to ラーメンベット 競馬) interaction when heated, helps release the collected ラーメンベット 競馬 immediately so that overall energy input to produce ラーメンベット 競馬 is minimized.
Other attempts at pulling ラーメンベット 競馬 air are typically energy-intensive and do not produce much. And although 6 liters does not sound like much, the researchers say that creating thicker films or absorbent beds or arrays with optimization could drastically increase the amount of water they yield.
The reaction itself is a simple one, the researchers said, which reduces the challenges of scaling it up and achieving mass usage.
“This is not something you need an advanced degree to use,” said Youhong “Nancy” Guo, the lead author on the paper and a former doctoral ラーメンベット 競馬 in Yu’s lab, now a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “It’s straightforward enough that anyone can make it at home if they have the materials.”
The film is flexible and can be molded into a variety of shapes and sizes, depending on the need of the user. Making the film requires only the gel precursor, which includes all the relevant ingredients poured into a mold.
“The gel takes 2 minutes to set simply. Then, it just needs to be freeze-dried, and it can be peeled off the mold and used immediately after that,” said Weixin Guan, a doctoral ラーメンベット 競馬 on Yu’s team and a lead researcher of the work.
The research was funded by the U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and drinking ラーメンベット 競馬 for soldiers in arid climates is a big part of the project. However, the researchers also envision this as something that people could someday buy at a hardware store and use in their homes because of the simplicity.
Yu directed the project. Guo and Guan co-led experimental efforts on synthesis, characterization of the samples and device demonstration. Other team members are Chuxin Lei, Hengyi Lu and Wen Shi.
