Sorption materials for water harvesting and carbon capture in the context of 2030 Agenda

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development sets the main goals to be achieved in 10 years as of now. Among them, goals number 6 and 13 deeply describe what needs to be improved in terms of access to drinkable water and climate change. In the engineering field, sorption material can represent a fundamental assist in accomplishing these two objectives. Water harvesting from the atmosphere can be an important tool to address water shortages around the world, especially in dry and arid climate, where no other solution would seem feasible. In this context it is firstly presented an Atmospheric Water Harvesting Prototype designed in the laboratory of Politecnico di Torino, based on sorption material and solar technology. The choice of a good material it is the key point for an efficient system. Adsorption materials are those that showed the highest potential, and among different possible families, calcium alginate demonstrates the capability to adsorb up to 100% of its own weight. Within this application, calcium alginates samples are manufactured at different concentration and properties. Finally, kinetic and adsorption rates are analyzed to better understand its attitudes for an adsorption and regeneration cycle in a water harvesting device. Climate change problem is more than ever crucial today: CO2 is the most impacting greenhouse gas exacerbating global warming. Carbon dioxide emissions reach every year a higher peak, ending in an atmospheric concentration that target always a new record. Post-combustion technologies are not anymore enough to contain the temperature increase within 2°C for the end of the century and Direct Air Capture has proven to be a possible solution as negative emission device. So far, sorption material, either solids or liquids, showed problem in terms of efficiency or energy consumption. In order to establish a reliable and sustainable material, a liquid sorbent able to perform CO2 absorption was studied in Princeton University’s laboratories. Moreover, a possible innovative process for carbon sequestration, capable to avoid regeneration problem typical of liquid sorbents, is proposed. Finally, a feasibility analysis is presented, in order to assess the opportunity of this material to operate in a real device.