Device gives hope to drought victims

SAN FRANCISCO - A device that uses the power of the sun could help to alleviate droughts after it extracted 2.8 liters of water from the air over a 12-hour period.

The prototype, known as a water harvester, was constructed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology using a material known as a metal-organic framework, which absorbs the water.

"This is a major breakthrough in the long-standing challenge of harvesting water from the air at low humidity," said Omar Yaghi, a professor in chemistry at University of California, Berkeley and a faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.