Drupps published in Nature Water
Fredrik Edström, Co-founder of Drupps and one of the authors of the Nature Water article, visiting a malting plant in Spain. Photo: Drupps
Nature Water has published an article where developers at Drupps highlight what is holding back airborne water as a solution to the global water crisis.
There are numerous solutions for extracting water from air (or more correctly, airborne water). However, these methods require a lot of energy. Last week, the world-renowned journal Nature published an article about the technical challenges that remain in making airborne water more usable.
Fredrik Edström, one of the authors and also one of the founders of Drupps, explains:
"Research on exciting technical solutions for airborne water is constantly being published. But no one has previously managed to make water extraction profitable due to the high energy content of the water, which makes it expensive to extract. We are trying to solve this by turning its energy content into a resource, to make water extraction profitable."
In some applications, the cost of energy and water is not a major concern, such as in the production of wood products. But for dryers of malt, dairy, and yeast products, energy purchasing is a major expense. Reducing energy use by up to 30% would make a major saving for these industries, both on cost and CO₂ emission.
Drupps’s technology is based on absorption, rather than the more well-known method of cooling the air. It can be customized for industrial plants, which gives it substantial business potential.
Where in the world would this technology be most useful? Fredrik’s co-founder, Jonas Wamstad, develops:
"Since our technology extracts both water and energy, it is profitable in many parts of the world. Not least in the Nordics, where the energy debate is intense and CO₂-reducing ambitions are high. Drupps offers an untapped energy source as an added value, apart from the obvious water."