A Startup Has a Plan to Make Water From Air Using Data Centers’ Waste Heat
Source: Wired ·
Atoco’s new machines use specialized materials that can harvest water from some of the driest air on Earth without using electricity.
From the source
An industrial park in Irvine, California, may seem an odd spot to show off technology that wouldn’t be out of place in Dune , but that’s what’s happening on a sweltering September morning. The temperature is already over 80 degrees Fahrenheit as the sun rises on a 20-foot-tall, metal-clad machine in the parking lot of Atoco, an Irvine, California-based startup. Engineers open panels to check systems and an iPad that shows a steadily ascending line that reveals the device’s purpose: harvesting water from thin air using special materials known as metal organic frameworks , or MOFs. The materials won Omar Yaghi, the company’s founder, the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 2025, and Atoco has shown they work in prototypes capable of producing gallons of water per day. What’s unique about this iteration of Atoco’s technology is what it doesn’t require. No grid connection or even electricity is needed to grab water from the air at the microscopic level, nor is it required to in turn wring the…