An industrial park in Irvine, California, may seem an odd spot to show off technology that wouldn’t be out of place in Dune, but that’s what’s happening on a sweltering September morning.
The temperature is already over 80 degrees Fahrenheit as the sun rises on a 20-foot-tall, metal-clad machine in the parking lot of Atoco, an Irvine, California-based startup. Engineers open panels to check systems and an iPad that shows a steadily ascending line that reveals the device’s purpose: harvesting water from thin air using special materials known as metal organic frameworks, or MOFs.
