Recently, the Agro-meteorological Disaster Prevention and Control Team of the Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development in Agriculture, CAAS, thoroughly explored the current development status and future development trends of AWH technology, and proposed new possibilities for the supply of safe drinking water and irrigated agricultural water globally. The relevant research results were published in  Water Research .

AWH technology is an emerging sustainable development strategy to deal with global water scarcity. To better understand the current state of AWH technology development, this review conducted a bibliometric analysis highlighting three water harvesting technologies (fog harvesting, condensation, and sorption). By comprehensively reviewing the research progress and performing a comparative assessment of these technologies, this review summarized past achievements and critically analyzed the different technologies.

Based on the key characteristics of each technology, this review presented the development prospects for the joint use of integrated/hybrid systems. Next, the water-energy relationship is used as a link to clarify the future development strategy of AWH technology in energy driving and conversion. Finally, this review outlined the core ideas of AWH for both basic research and practical applications and described its limitless possibilities for drinking water supply and agricultural irrigation. This review provides an essential reference for the development and practical application of AWH technologies, which contributes to the sustainable utilization of water resources globally.

This research was supported by the the National Key R&D Program of China and the Science and Technology Innovation Program of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science.

Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2023.121052