It was an early morning in the Tunisian desert when it dawned on Iheb Triki. Despite the hot, barren location — no source of potable water for miles, which is why he and his friends had packed 100 liters for their trip — there was still enough water in the air to have coated his car and tent with dew overnight. So the question arose: could that natural process be harnessed to make drinking water?
Triki, then working as a private equity investor in renewable energy, discussed the idea with his friend Mohamed Ali Abid, an engineer specializing in motor cooling systems. Within months they built the prototype of a device that did just that: pulling around eight gallons of water a day from the atmosphere, even when it’s extremely dry.
Three years of tinkering and fundraising later, they’re now, respectively, CEO and CTO of the company Kumulus, which is busy installing these washing machine-sized devices in schools and factories across northern Africa, the Middle East and southern France, with plans to roll them out to any region where’s there’s a higher need for, and poor supply of, drinking water.
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