🚰 Machine pulls water from the air - can produce 4,000 liters per day

• Startup Atoco is preparing production of a machine that extracts water directly from the air using nanocrystalline materials.
• The container-sized prototype can produce up to 1,057 gallons of water per day and be installed at data centers, hospitals, and other critical infrastructure.
• The technology is based on MOF materials, for which Omar Yaghi shared the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Nanocrystals capture water molecules

Atoco's prototype sits in a parking lot in Southern California and looks unremarkable until water starts flowing from a hose. Inside the machine are wires, tubes, and a container of light-colored material. The light-colored material consists of MOFs, metal-organic frameworks. These are nanocrystalline structures engineered at the atomic level to attract specific molecules, in this case H2O.

The machine silently collects water molecules from the surrounding air and stores them in the material's porous cavities, which function as microscopic water tanks. An ounce of MOF material can contain a surface area equivalent to a soccer field. The material is largely composed of common elements such as carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, copper, and aluminum.

When the machine is ready to deliver the water, the material is heated so that the molecules are released. A condenser converts the water vapor into liquid, which flows out through a slender tube.

Two models for different needs

The shipping container-sized machine is set to go into production later this year and can be installed at data centers, hospitals, and other critical infrastructure. It would take about a dozen machines to supply a water-efficient data center in California.

There is also a model powered by sunlight that operates off the grid. It produces less water and is intended for communities where water currently has to be trucked in. In Ethiopia, such a machine could supply about eight households in a village.

Atoco expects to manufacture and sell 200 machines in 2027. The company says interest from potential buyers already exceeds the planned production capacity. The production model will be able to deliver water for a few cents per liter.

Clean water without contaminants

Because the MOF material only attracts H2O molecules, the water is free of PFAS, microplastics, and other contaminants often found in the water supply. This makes the technology attractive for data centers and semiconductor plants, which need pure water for cooling and manufacturing.

Competitor AirJoule Technologies, a joint venture with GE Vernova, plans to start production later this year of a MOF-based machine that can produce 2,000 liters per day.

The Nobel laureate behind the technology

Omar Yaghi, 61, a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, founded Atoco in 2021. He shared the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on MOFs. Yaghi grew up in Jordan as the son of Palestinian refugees in a one-room house he shared with nine siblings and the family's cows. The house had no electricity or running water, and his task as a child was to fill as many containers as he could find when the authorities delivered water to his village every other week.

According to Atoco, there is more water in the atmosphere than in all the world's lakes and rivers combined, and it is continuously being replenished.

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