A regulation strategy of sorbent stepwise position for boosting atmospheric water harvesting in arid area

• Main Authors: Yaohui Feng, Tianshu Ge, Bin Chen, Guowu Zhan, Ruzhu Wang
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2021-09-01
• Series: Cell Reports Physical Science
• Subjects: atmospheric water harvesting; adsorption; metal-organic framework; stepwise position; migration; arid climate
• Online Access: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666386421002769

Summary: Numerous studies have focused on tailoring materials for sorption-based atmospheric water harvesting (AWH) in arid climates, but both the design and modification of materials are a compromise for specific conditions and even sacrifice the nature of S-shaped isotherm. Inspired by the manipulation method of air humidity, we herein propose a regulation strategy of sorbent stepwise position by inducing an inner cooling source without changing the intrinsic properties of metal-organic framework (MOF). Significant improvement of water uptake of MIL-101(Cr) coating can be reached from 0.13 to 1.05 g/g with the cooling temperature of 14°C in typical arid climate (25°C and 30% relative humidity [RH]). Mechanism of stepwise position migration is elucidated and performance of AWH device based on Peltier cooler is enhanced as compared to that without regulation. This study weakens the limitation of the exclusive tailoring materials for specific conditions and would provide a promising perspective for next-generation scalable and variable weather-adaptive AWH systems.