There is nothing more devastating than drought for agriculture: hectares and hectares of cultivated land literally go up in smoke due to the prolonged absence of rain: a prototype developed by Edward Linnacre, a student at Swinburne University in Australia, promises to erase this problem in the future. His name is Airdrop.

Here's how it works

Despite its rather essential design, Airdrop is able to filter hot air from the environment through a turbine, filter it thanks to a complex system of pipes, cool it enough to condense a part of it and return the rest to the surrounding air: some water remains which is distributed through a series of tubes and intended for watering the plants. In this initial prototype (much smaller than the inventors' intentions) Linnacre managed to produce one liter of water a day: really not bad.

It is a device that has a prodigious, made with low-tech materials (this may mean that it will not be difficult to use it and perhaps produce it even in the many developing countries affected by the perennial water crisis). The best news of all, in any case, is that such a dream has won an award (the Dyson Award) that will allow this young inventor to realize his dream on a larger scale: these days it is no small thing .