Performance investigation of atmospheric water harvesting systems

In this paper performance and limitations of commercially-available atmospheric water harvesting (AWH) systems are experimentally investigated. A new experimental setup and test procedure, following the relevant ASHRAE and ANSI/AHRI standards, are developed to measure the water harvesting rate and input electrical power of several residential-size AWHs from different manufacturers. The setup is equipped with an environmental chamber to mimic all climatic conditions in research laboratory at Simon Fraser University and to obtain performance characteristics of AWH systems. The results show the range of water harvesting rate, energy intensity ranging from 1.02 kWh/L for warm and humid to 6.23 kWh/L for cold and humid climates, and climatic limitations of the conventional AWH technology that can be used as a platform for further development of higher efficiency AWH systems in future.