This year, the Abdul Latif Jameel World Water and Food Security Lab (J-WAFS) is supporting two MIT initiatives, one that has to do with harvesting water from air, and the second is about using technology to enhance crop production.
Since securing clean drinking water in the MENA regions is considered a challenge, especially with the region being incredibly dry, the J-WAFs found the project worthy of supporting. The initiative is planning on creating a passive solar device that will be able to extract clean, fresh water from the air at any range of humidity, using a metal-organic framework, a specialized porous material, which enables remote areas to access water supples.
On the other hand, the second initiative is creating a solar-powered electrochemical device which can convert nitrogen from air, water, and sunlight into ammonia, which can then be added to the soil to promote growth.
With these two initiatives, we hopefully no longer have to worry about dehydration or malnutrition!
For more information, read here.