Solar extracts water from air

US scientist launches game-changer

DRINKING water is the most constrained resource around the world and humanity’s greatest challenge, according to Zero Mass Water founder and chief executive Cody Friesen, a materials scientist and an associate professor at Arizona State University in the US, who launched his solar water concept in Cape Town yesterday.

Zero Mass Water’s mission is to make drinking water an unlimited resource through its hydropanel called Source, which turns sunshine and air into high-quality water.

The panel system uses an ultra-absorbent material that collects water from the surrounding air, even in arid conditions. The system produces an average of three to five litres of water a panel a day.

Giving a brief background, Friesen said he did his PhD in materials science and had worked in the renewable energy space for a number of years. He became a professor of materials science in 2004.

“I started building technologies created around renewable energy space, and it became pretty clear about eight years ago that solar was going to win, that solar was going to be cheaper than coal, and we were transitioning towards a renewables future,” he said.

Friesen said the question that came to his mind as an innovator was what was going to be next.

“What I arrived at was that direct renewable resources was the thing that was going to be next, because renewable to electricity solves part of the problem, but eventually we must solve energy, water and food, and the most constrained resource we face around the world is drinking water. Drinking water is probably humanity’s greatest challenge,” he said.

Friesen said Cape Town recently faced the possibility of a Day Zero, which was pushed back to next year.

He said about a half-a-trillion litres of bottled water were sold globally a year. This does not include sachets and informal types of drinking water packaging.

“That actually adds up to a huge amount of plastic and a huge amount of carbon