Leveraging E-Waste to Enhance Water Condensation by Effective Use of Solid-state Thermoelectric Cooling

Water scarcity affects upwards of a billion people worldwide today. Multiple cities, such as Cape Town, Mexico City, Melbourne, and Jakarta have been threatened by water crises in the past. However, these cities are perfect for harnessing the power of water condensation. Fog nets and condensation towers have been used as water condensation devices, but these mechanisms are expensive, require preexisting infrastructure, and need certain geographic features to function. This project leverages the potential of capturing humidity to build a high-efficiency water condensation device that can generate water and be used for personal and commercial purposes. In addition, the device is portable, environment-friendly, inexpensive, scalable, and can be incorporated into existing water storage infrastructure. The device uses the principle of solid-state thermoelectric cooling and the Peltier effect to function. The Peltier effect is based on the phenomenon that when changing electric currents are applied between the junctions in a thermocouple, it causes a change in temperature. Change in temperature causes one of the junctions in the thermocouple to heat and another junction to cool. Thermoelectric modules can be packaged as part of a device that at room temperature causes cooling, thereby causing effective water condensation. This compact environment-friendly device would have low power requirements, which would potentially allow it to utilize renewable energy sources and collect water at the most needed location.