In the mountains outside Scottsdale, Arizona, the four people and two dogs living at Cody Friesen’s house get all the water they need for drinking and cooking from two big panels mounted on the roof.
Scottsdale — where it rarely rains and temperatures can easily rise above 100 degrees in the summer months — isn’t the kind of place where water is in abundance. But Friesen, an associate professor of materials sciences at Arizona State University, is also the founder of a startup that he says has come up with a solution for gathering water, even in this desert climate.
Called Zero Mass Water, it uses solar-powered rooftop panels, such as the ones on his house, to run a water-gathering system that sounds almost like alchemy: It captures moisture from the air, cleaning and distilling it so Friesen can use it to make dinner or give the dogs a bowl of water to lap up.
