Atmospheric Water Harvesting by Large-Scale Radiative Cooling Cellulose-Based Fabric

Atmospheric water harvesting (AWH) has received tremendous interest because of population growth, limited freshwater resources, and water pollution. However, key challenges remain in developing efficient, flexible, and lightweight AWH materials with scalability. Here, we demonstrated a radiative cooling fabric for AWH via its hierarchically structured cellulose network and hybrid sorption-dewing mechanisms. With 8.3% solar absorption and -,0.9 infrared (IR) emissivity, the material can drop up to 7.5 degrees C below ambient temperature without energy consumption via radiative cooling. Water adsorption onto the hydrophilic functional groups of cellulose is dominated by sorption at low relative humidity (RH) and dewing at high RH. The cellulose network provides desirable mechanical properties with entangled high-aspect-ratio fibers over tens of adsorption-extraction cycles. In the field test, the cellulose sample exhibited water uptake of 1.29 kg/kg at 80% RH during the night. The profusion of radiative cooling fabric features desirable cost effectiveness and allows fast deployment into large-scale AWH applications.

Automated summary

Atmospheric water harvesting (AWH) has attracted significant attention due to population growth, limited freshwater resources, and water pollution. By developing efficient, flexible, and lightweight AWH materials and utilizing radiative cooling technology, low-cost and efficient large-scale AWH applications can be achieved.