In Lima, A Billboard That Provides Water

What’s the Latest Development?

Researchers in Peru have come up with an ingenious solution to the challenge of providing drinking water to citizens living in the capital city of Lima: A billboard that uses a reverse osmosis system to “squeeze” humid air and deliver water through a spigot. The system works when air moves through, in order, “air filters, a vapor condenser, [and] a carbon filter” and ends up as water in a cold tank. The billboard is the brainchild of Universidad de Ingeniería & Tecnología (UTEC) researchers and ad agency Mayo Publicidad, and has so far produced approximately 25 gallons of fresh water a day.

What’s the Big Idea?

With 7.6 million residents, Lima is the second-largest city in the world located in a desert, and although it experiences an extraordinary amount of humidity, it only gets about 1.1 inches of rain a year. Most of the drinking water comes from wells, and according to a man interviewed in a promotional video, it’s not as good as the water produced by the billboard. “They could put this [billboard] in different places…if possible in each village, in each town,” he says.

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