TY - JOUR

T1 - A climate-driven adsorption-potential optimization framework for sorbents selection in photovoltaic-coupled atmospheric water harvesting

AU - Gao, Chenxuan

AU - Feng, Yaohui

AU - Wang, Jiazheng

AU - Grekova, A.

AU - Gordeeva, L.

AU - Pan, Quanwen

AU - Ge, Tianshu

N1 - The research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. W2412067), the Russian Science Foundation (Grant No. 25-43-00051), the Natural Science Foundation of Shanghai (Grant No. 24ZR1430900), and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant Nos. GZB20240427 and 2025M780577). Y. Feng would like to thank the support from Carbon Negative Synthetic Biology for Biomaterial Production from CO2 (CNSB). The CNSB is part of the CREATE Thematic Programme in Decarbonization and is supported by the National Research Foundation, Prime Minister's Office, Singapore under its Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (CREATE) programme.

PY - 2026/9/15

Y1 - 2026/9/15

N2 - Sorption-based atmospheric water harvesting (SAWH) driven by photovoltaic (PV) waste heat offers a promising pathway for decentralized water-electricity co-production, especially in regions facing concurrent water and energy scarcity. However, most existing studies evaluate reported sorbents under fixed operating conditions, and a quantitative framework that links adsorption characteristics to climate-driven system performance is still lacking. This study develops an adsorption-potential-based parametric framework to optimize idealized water adsorption isotherms under realistic climatic forcing by maximizing cumulative water yield. The framework explicitly quantifies optimal isotherm parameters, their sensitivities, and tolerance ranges across different climates. The results reveal that step-shaped adsorption behaviors are broadly favored across diverse climatic conditions, with the optimal adsorption-potential step position exhibiting pronounced spatial and seasonal variability governed by the local diurnal adsorption-potential window. Humid climates are capacity-controlled, with system performance governed by maximum uptake (sensitivity >90 %), a low optimal adsorption-potential step position of 1200 J mol−1, and broad tolerance bands reaching 800 J mol−1. In contrast, arid climates or climates with pronounced seasonal variability are step-controlled, where step-related parameters show sensitivities exceeding 60%, the optimal step position shifts to 1.5 times higher values, and the tolerance band narrows by 37.5%, requiring precise alignment with the climatic driving window. Furthermore, a regime dominance index (R) is introduced to quantitatively characterize the governing mechanism. For regions with pronounced climatic variability, monthly optimization outperforms annual optimization, delivering additional water-yield improvements of up to 18.57%. These results establish a unified framework for climate-driven optimization and the design of idealized sorbents in PV- SAWH systems.

AB - Sorption-based atmospheric water harvesting (SAWH) driven by photovoltaic (PV) waste heat offers a promising pathway for decentralized water-electricity co-production, especially in regions facing concurrent water and energy scarcity. However, most existing studies evaluate reported sorbents under fixed operating conditions, and a quantitative framework that links adsorption characteristics to climate-driven system performance is still lacking. This study develops an adsorption-potential-based parametric framework to optimize idealized water adsorption isotherms under realistic climatic forcing by maximizing cumulative water yield. The framework explicitly quantifies optimal isotherm parameters, their sensitivities, and tolerance ranges across different climates. The results reveal that step-shaped adsorption behaviors are broadly favored across diverse climatic conditions, with the optimal adsorption-potential step position exhibiting pronounced spatial and seasonal variability governed by the local diurnal adsorption-potential window. Humid climates are capacity-controlled, with system performance governed by maximum uptake (sensitivity >90 %), a low optimal adsorption-potential step position of 1200 J mol−1, and broad tolerance bands reaching 800 J mol−1. In contrast, arid climates or climates with pronounced seasonal variability are step-controlled, where step-related parameters show sensitivities exceeding 60%, the optimal step position shifts to 1.5 times higher values, and the tolerance band narrows by 37.5%, requiring precise alignment with the climatic driving window. Furthermore, a regime dominance index (R) is introduced to quantitatively characterize the governing mechanism. For regions with pronounced climatic variability, monthly optimization outperforms annual optimization, delivering additional water-yield improvements of up to 18.57%. These results establish a unified framework for climate-driven optimization and the design of idealized sorbents in PV- SAWH systems.

KW - Adsorption potential

KW - Climate-driven optimization

KW - Isotherm modeling

KW - PV-SAWH system

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105039844182

UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/6b685651-8ac2-39b2-bb2e-f8df7cb9309b/

U2 - 10.1016/j.energy.2026.141428

DO - 10.1016/j.energy.2026.141428

M3 - Article

VL - 359

JO - Energy

JF - Energy

SN - 0360-5442

M1 - 141428

ER -