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 equipment that can collect potable water directly from the air, and how such atmospheric water collection systems can help respond to disasters. We are testing whether it can be used.
“As long as the hospital has both water and electricity, you’re good to go,” says David Stackenberg of Florida-based Genesis Systems, which designed the device. The system uses an absorbent material called a metal-organic framework to concentrate moisture from air pumped into the machine, releasing pure water when the material is heated to about 8°C.
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 with poor 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 Florida’s west coast, Florida Health Care Agency Commissioner Jason Weeda 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 touring the damage caused by Hurricane Helen, which made landfall on September 26th. “I thought this would be perfect for next year’s hurricane season,” he says. “Little did we know that in two weeks we would begin preparing for Hurricane Milton.”
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. Stuckenberg said the system can more or less operate anywhere humidity is above 10%, but efficiency decreases as humidity drops. He estimates that a system installed in Florida’s humid air would use about 0.8 kilowatt-hours of electricity per gallon of water, and the system would cost $10 to $20 per day to operate.
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 their own wells. 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.”
Paul Westerhoff of Arizona State University said atmospheric water harvesting systems can be an “important tool” for disaster response when water supplies can be disrupted for long periods of time, and in relatively similar situations like Florida. It is said to be suitable for areas with high humidity. However, he says that in past disasters, reliance on generator power was often an issue.
topic:
(Tag translation) Disaster
