Overview
- Researchers built a vibrating ceramic-ring actuator encircled by a nozzle ring that dislodges and guides droplets from moisture-absorbing sorbent materials.
- Quarter-sized samples saturated in humidity chambers were dried in minutes, compared with tens of minutes or hours for heat-based recovery.
- The team calculates an approximately 45× efficiency gain over passive solar methods for the same sorbent in controlled experiments.
- The device requires electricity, and the researchers propose a small solar cell to power sensing and automated soak-and-shake cycles throughout the day.
- Findings led by Ikra Iftekhar Shuvo in Svetlana Boriskina’s MIT lab were published Nov. 18 in Nature Communications, with envisioned window-scale or community systems pending scaling and field trials.