Dubai will see a second prototype of the S.A.W.E.R. The container version will enrich the Rochester Institute of Technology
13. 11. 2021
A mobile prototype of the S.A.W.E.R. (solar-air-water-energy-resources), which autonomously produces water from the air using only solar energy, is now a part of the prestigious Rochester Institute of Technology in Dubai. It was installed on its premises and launched by the team from the University Centre for Energy Efficient Buildings of the Czech Technical University. In the coming months, the team will study the Czech technology together with scientists and students from the university in Dubai. The project is meant to start a longer-term cooperation between the Czech Technical University in Prague and the Rochester Institute of Technology in Dubai.
The container version of S.A.W.E.R. will newly be used for educational and research purposes. The management of the Rochester Institute of Technology became familiar with the prototype of the technology in the Czech national pavilion at the EXPO 2020 in Dubai in August, and in September the UCEEB CTU team delivered the mobile version to their premises.
"We are very happy that we managed to establish such close cooperation with Czech Technical University in Prague. For our students and researchers, it is a major addition to the studies and research in energy and materials engineering, but it also opens up opportunities for us to develop other interesting and futuristic fields,“ explains Yousef Al-Assaf, President at Rochester Institute of Technology in Dubai. "We are also expanding our cooperation in drone development with the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, whose team won several awards at the world competition in Abu Dhabi, and I also see perspective in the international Student Formula project – in world monopost races built by technical university students. Our institute is currently also working on one.”
The University Centre for Energy Efficient Buildings of the Czech Technical University in Prague actively participated in the development of the container version of S.A.W.E.R., which was first tested in 2019 in the Sweihan Desert near Abu Dhabi. After that, the UCEEB team took it back to the laboratories in Buštěhrad and, thanks to the six-month trial operation in real conditions, was able to double its capacity. Since the opening of the World Exposition in October, visitors, and media as well as experts and investors from all over the world have been interested in the Czech technological marvel.
"The original idea to connect five Czech patents and innovations and thus contribute to the theme of the EXPO" Connecting Minds - Creating the Future "with a functional exhibit cultivating the dry desert and turning it into a flowering oasis, became a technology interesting not only from a scientific point of view but also from a business one,” says Jiří František Potužník, the author of the original idea and the Commissioner General of the Czech Republic’s participation at the Dubai EXPO. “We are pleased by the interest from the media, potential investors, and by the perspective of long-term cooperation continuing after the end of the World Exposition. And that should also be the point of the EXPO," he adds.
The S.A.W.E.R. technology permanently located in the Czech pavilion at the EXPO in Duba produces more than eight hundred litres of water a day and irrigates the garden in front of the national exposition. The mobile version, which comprises two shipping containers, can produce up to two hundred litres of distilled water, which the WatiMin mineralization unit then converts into potable water. And CTU has already developed a module, which is transportable by two people with a capacity of twenty litres of water per day. They are currently working on a personal equipment version the size of a canteen.
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