Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital was damaged by Hurricane Milton earlier this week.
Dark Shad/Tampa Bay Times/ZUMA Wire/Alamy
Children's hospitals that lost access to water in the aftermath of Hurricane Milton are now using devices that can collect potable water directly from the air, and such atmospheric water collection systems are being used to respond to disasters. We are testing how it can be used.
“As long as the hospital has water and electricity, we'll be fine,” he says. David Stuckenberg at Genesis Systems, a Florida-based company that designed the device. The system uses an absorbent material called a metal-organic framework to concentrate moisture from air pumped into the machin…/>
Such atmospheric water harvesting systems have long been of interest because they can operate independently from other water infrastructure. A small but growing number of them are being installed to provide daily water to off-grid communities, and are used not only for military operations, but also in cities without water infrastructure and in arid areas where water supply is unreliable. It is also used in places where Source, an Arizona-based company that makes solar-powered “hydro panels,” has started selling air water in cans.
Another way these flexible systems are being used is in response to disasters where communities are left without a reliable supply of clean water. As Hurricane Milton approached the west coast of Florida; Jason WajdaThe head of the Florida Department of Health Services saw an opportunity to try this out.
During Hurricane Ian in 2022, Ouida witnessed water issues and power outages that forced some hospitals to close for weeks, sometimes requiring evacuations days after the storm had passed. He learned about Genesis Systems' technology while tourin…/>
Prior to the Oct. 9 landfall on Milton Island, the system was brought into the state's disaster response preparedness phase. Shortly after the hurricane passed, a truck drove them to Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital in St. Petersburg, where the hospital's water supply had been interrupted due to a leaky water pipe. Weida said this particular hospital was a priority because it is extremely difficult to evacuate newborns from the hospital's large neonatal intensive care unit.
On October 10, workers connected the system, which is about the size of a shipping container, to a generator and is now producing up to 2,000 gallons of potable water per day while the hospital's regular water supply is fully restored. is produced…./>
Other ways to guarantee water supply in an emergency include transporting it by truck in tanks or bottles, or using reverse osmosis systems. After the Hurricane Ian experience, some hospitals dug a well by themselves. But Weida says harvesting water from the air is a surprisingly flexible and quick way to secure water supplies. “Redundancy is very important,” he says. “This provides another layer.”
Atmospheric water harvesting systems can be an “important tool” for disaster response when water supplies may be disrupted for long periods of time, he said. Paul Westerhoff Developed at Arizona State University, it is suitable for relatively humid locations like Florida. However, he says that in past disasters, reliance on generator power was often an issue.
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Source: www.newscientist.com
