The world needs free-flowing, clean water, but drought and pollution jeopardize our water sources.

An SWRI team is taking on these threats, tapping into a solution called atmospheric water harvesting

and finding new ways to clean up contaminants.

We're discussing their groundbreaking research next on this episode of Technology Today.

We live with technology, science, engineering, and the results of innovative research every day. Now,

let's understand it better. You're listening to the Technology Today podcast presented by Southwest Research Institute.

Hello and welcome to technology today. I'm Lisa Fenya. Our guest today is SWRI engineer and program manager Kevin Supak. He leads a research team with two main goals to find ways to augment sources of water and

to clean up existing water sources. The team is exploring atmospheric water harvesting,

a method of pulling water from the air, and they're also looking at new ways to decontaminate

water to make it safe for drinking. Their findings could help communities around the

world dealing with water shortages. Thanks for joining us, Kevin. Thanks for having me, Lisa.

This is an honor to talk with you. Let's talk about the problem first. Many of us just turn on

our taps and clean running water appears, but we're fortunate. We know here in the U.S. and around the world,

communities experience drought and clean water shortages. In fact, the Western U.S. is going

through a drought right now. So how extensive is the need globally for clean, readily available

drinking water? You're absolutely right, Lisa. We're very fortunate here in the U.S. that most of us can go to our taps, open up a

faucet, and get clean running water that is extremely safe to drink.

But that's not the case around the world.

The United Nations currently estimates that over 25% of humanity lacks access to clean water. Most of these people are in Asia. And this figure can even double during periods of drought. And here when we have seasonal droughts that occur around the world. And there's all kinds of sanitation issues that we see around the world

where that can contaminate our water or our water sources too. And you mentioned as well, these

problems are starting to show up here in the U.S. too, are increasing population and drought and

lack of snowfall have really affected Lake Mead, which is a major water source for the western

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