Integrating Salt-Incorporated Hydrogel into a 3D-Printed Gyroid for Atmospheric Water Harvesting and Humidification

Atmospheric water harvesting (AWH) technology, which extracts moisture from ambient air, is a promising solution to global water shortages. Salt-based sorbents are promising for AWH due to their high water uptake capacity. However, these materials require substantial atmospheric exposure for high sorption/desorption kinetics, limiting space efficiency while also suffering from poor stability and high energy demands for water desorption. Herein, a LiCl-incorporated PHEA/PEGDA composite (LiCl-HG) was developed via 3D printing to achieve high exposure with minimal space occupation, enabling efficient moisture capture and water storage. The gyroid composite achieves a water uptake of 6.0 g g-1 under 70% relative humidity (RH), with low desorption energy (1472 kJ kg-1) and a high desorption rate (1984 × 10-6 kg m-2 s-1 at 60 °C). Leveraging its superior performance, a dry cabinet was designed that can maintain the relative humidity at 5% while reducing the energy consumption by 30%. Additionally, AWH tests for the 3D-printed composite highlighted the water production rate up to 9.06 kg kg-1 day-1. A humidifier was further developed to improve energy efficiency, cutting humidification energy use by 50%. These findings offer a promising pathway for the synthesis of materials with high efficiency in miniaturized and integrated AWH and humidification systems.