Advert turns air into drinking water

Advert turns air into drinking water

In the nearer neighbourhood outside Lima in Peru, an advertisement billboard provides clean drinking water at disposition to all people for free – mainly its neighbours.

The billboard produces clean drinking water from the humidity in the air through filters. The advertisement agency Mayo Peru DraftFCB and engineers at the University of Engineering and Technology (UTEC) in Lima joined forces to realize the brave project.

The main idea is to “put imagination into action” and to further develop creativity among its students. On the billboard up high it says: “A billboard that produces drinking water from air” (“Un panel que produce agua potable del aire”).

UTEC was about to open the application period for 2013 and a  clever way to capture students' attention was using an advertising technique, where it is made even more attractive. So they decided to create a billboard which turns air into drinking water to attract innovative students into this university which had been functioning only one year.

Of course, the panel has become a local attraction for its uniqueness and originality, but it is especially useful for all villagers near its location at the coastal desert of Peru. The annual precipitation of this city is almost zero, but the humidity of the air is about 98% daily, which is the main resource to produce clean water to the whole community. So far, the billboard has produced over 9,000 litres of drinking water - 96 litres a day.

This could be a great idea to implement it around the world, especially on those places which are suffering of lack of clean water, or using other natural resources to fabricate or purify impure water.

Besides, we have here in Chile the driest desert of the world. The Atacama Desert would be a very good place to implement this type of technology, given that the humidity is enough to produce an important amount of water.