OVERVIEW
Engineers at Lima’s University of Engineering and Technology (UTEC), in collaborations with the ad agency Mayo DraftFCB devised a way to literally connect Lima’s dry conditions to the humid air above by using a readily available asset: a billboard. The innovation is designed to address a need for many of the city’s local residents for clean drinking water in an area where the presence of rain is almost zero.
FEATURES
- The UTEC Water Billboard harvests water from the humid air. The air is processed through a series of reverse osmosis machines installed inside the billboard. The air is passed through a filter, its humidity condense and cleaned of carbon, then stored for local residents to simply turn on a tap at the billboard’s base to receive clean drinking water.
- Each tank stores about 20 liters. Five generators’ purified water is gathered into one tank.
KEY RESULTS
- The structure that previously only promoted products few residents in the area could afford now produces an average of 95 liters of clean water per day. It has received an EthicMark® Award for its innovative outdoor billboard in 2013.
- The billboards have been recognized as the first in the world to be repurposed to convert the air’s humidity into drinking water, and have become a model of a resourceful way to leverage extra abilities from existing infrastructure for new beneficial use in the city.
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