A Startup Has a Plan to Make Water From Air Using Data Centers’ Waste Heat
Irvine-based startup Atoco is developing systems that use metal-organic frameworks to extract water from dry air with low-grade industrial heat, including waste heat from data centers. The company says its prototypes can produce up to 300 liters of water per day and is pursuing larger commercial systems, though significant scaling challenges remain.
Atoco, an Irvine, California, startup founded by chemist Omar Yaghi and led by CEO Samer Taha, has demonstrated a system that captures water vapor from dry air using metal-organic frameworks. The process uses low-grade heat rather than grid electricity to release the captured water, making data centers a potential application because their servers generate substantial waste heat and their cooling systems can consume millions of gallons of water.
The company’s parking-lot prototype can produce as much as 300 liters of water per day and operates using heat equivalent to that produced by a 20-kilowatt data center. Atoco is developing a commercial unit capable of producing up to 1,000 liters daily and says it is discussing pilot projects with major technology companies, although it has not identified them. Experts cautioned that the technology remains untested at large scale and that rural deployments may lack the heat and energy infrastructure needed to operate it.