Resilience of an atmospheric water harvesting system to combustion derived organic pollutants
2025
Douglas Hedström | Fredrik Edström | Per Dahlbäck | Wenny Noha | Jimmy Yu
Abstract Atmospheric water harvesting (AWH) offers a promising solution to global water scarcity, yet questions remain regarding the impact of air pollution on water quality, particularly the potential transfer of combustion-derived organic contaminants. In this study, we evaluate the resilience of a custom-built AWH system that uses potassium acetate as a liquid desiccant and vacuum-assisted evaporation for water regeneration. Controlled contamination tests were performed by introducing emissions from a diesel engine and a two-stroke gasoline engine into the AWH system intake airflow. Gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) was employed to analyze both the intake air and the harvested water. The air samples revealed a complex mixture of volatile and semi-volatile organic compounds, including hydrocarbons (C5−C15), benzene, toluene, MTBE/ETBE, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, with total concentrations up to 5.3 mg/m3. In contrast, none were detected in the water, with all results falling below the detection limit of 50 μg/L. These findings demonstrate that the desiccant–vacuum AWH system provides effective phase-change separation and intrinsic barrier properties against organic air pollutants. This is, to our knowledge, the first study to perform a direct GC–MS comparison of air and water in an AWH context under controlled pollution exposure, providing strong evidence that such systems can produce clean water even in heavily contaminated environments.
Show more [+] Less [-]AGROVOC Keywords
Bibliographic information
This bibliographic record has been provided by Directory of Open Access Journals