OK, I'm going way out of my own comfort zone when it comes to this topic, but I'm going to toss out an idea anyway. I heard about this idea of harvesting water from the atmosphere on NPR a long time ago (was it this many years ago?). Lately, the news from Taiwan has been about the lack of rainfall (fewer typhoons, which is resulting in less water for industrial, agricultural, and residential purposes). It has come up most recently in worries about how Taiwan's production of semiconductors will be affected by the drought.
What I haven't seen yet is any reporting on the possibility of using the idea of atmospheric water harvesting to provide more water to Taiwan. I wrote a couple of friends about it--one a Taiwanese industrial engineer at my school, and the other, a faculty member in a university in Taiwan that has a sustainability science program. Neither of them knew much about what might be going on in Taiwan in relation to this idea.
I also wrote an email to President Tsai's office (through their website--I don't have her personal email or anything). I mentioned a couple of articles about this idea (they don't let you forward links, unfortunately): this more general-audience article on metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) for water harvesting, and this academic article on "autonomous atmospheric water seeping MOF matrix."
I don't know if anyone in Taiwan is working on this already. I don't know if it would even work--maybe it's too humid in Taiwan (a lot of the places where they use these things seem to be pretty arid). But it might be worth a try.
[See update here.]
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