The company is developing a first of its kind ‘atmospheric water harvester’ to help address the global water shortage.
WD News: NovNat Tech Ltd, a new company based in the Unit 9 incubator at the Birmingham Research Park, has secured funding from Innovate UK to develop a novel technology that can generate water out of air.
NovNat Tech is offering solutions to one of the most critical problems of today and the future. The harvest uses a proprietary material that has already been vigorously tested for its water sorption characteristics, and has displayed breakthrough performance, capturing and releasing water from air at a faster rate and with less energy required than any existing material.
The Innovate UK funding will support the development of an on-board vehicle atmospheric water generator, that can produce clean water while on the go. The five-month project will allow the company to further expand on the core technologies and IP developed so far.
Founders Abdulbari Belouafi and Ibrahim Albaik first met as graduate researchers at the University of Birmingham, after which they worked on developing the breakthrough technology, which has broad-based patent protection.
They then attended UoB Elevate, an incubator and business growth programme for University of Birmingham students and graduates, before founding NovNat Tech, an engineering design company to develop water harvesting systems enabled by advanced materials.
The innovators then applied for, and won, grant funding from the Climate Innovation Platform, and entered Unit 9 to build a prototype that can collect water from air, utilising the waste heat emitted from various processes within buildings to produce potable water, with a net zero carbon footprint.
Source: University of Birmingham
Image courtesy: Pixabay
