Uploaded September 2017 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
At the edge of the Atacama Desert, one of the driest places on earth, Lima, Peru, receives almost no rainfall. About 700,000 people have no access to clean water for drinking or bathing. Another 600,000 of the city's 7.5 million residents rely on cisterns for their water, which must be filled by pumps or by hand and cleaned regularly.
But Lima's Pacific Coast location experiences humidity of more than 90 percent on summer days, from December to February. So engineers from Peru's University of Engineering and Technology (UTEC) have devised a way to turn that humid air into usable water. Last December, they erected a billboard in the Bujama District of Lima that by early March had produced 9450 liters (about 2500 gallons) of water.
The idea came about because UTEC was facing a slump in enrollment as the new semester approached; the engineering department wanted a way to attract more engineering students to the university. They went to Peruvian ad agency Mayo Publicidad, and the partnership of engineers and marketers crafted an advertisement that would provide a very visible demonstration of the university's engineering projects. The water-collecting billboard was born.
Electricity from the city's power lines runs the five condensers inside the billboard. Like the condenser in your home air conditioner, the ones in the UTEC billboard are cooler than the air outside. When air contacts the cooled surfaces of the condensers, the air also cools, and the water vapor in the air condenses into liquid water. After reverse-osmosis purification, the water flows down into a 20-liter storage tank at the base of the billboard. The billboard generates about 96 liters of water each day, and a simple faucet gives local residents access to the water.
The University of Engineering and Technology (UTEC) is based in Lima, Peru. Last year, staff began thinking about designing an advertising billboard to encourage students to enroll for the academic year. They approached advertising agency Mayo DraftFCB with the brief.
Alejandro Aponte, Mayo DraftFCB's creative director, takes up the story. "I started brainstorming with my co-creative director Juan Donalisio and we came up with the idea of showing these young students, through a real-life example, how engineering can offer a solution to real-life problems."
The real-life problem he alludes to is the lack of potable water in the region. Lima is the world's second-largest desert capital and about one million people don't have access to clean drinking water. The area receives just 0.51 inches of rainfall a year and residents often have to rely on other sources for their water.
"Here in the Bujama district, most of us draw water from the well," says Francisco Quilca, a Bujama resident, speaking in a UTEC video about the billboard. "It's not nice and it's polluted."
The solution, devised and delivered by the two organisations, is a billboard that generates drinking water from moisture in the air around it – annual rainfall may be low but the atmospheric humidity is about 98%.
The billboard contains five generators that condense the moisture in the air to obtain bulk water. The air passes through a series of filters, including antistatic agents, activated carbon, minerals and reverse osmosis.
The condensed water then flows under UV lamps for further purification and is collected in a tank from where it is dispensed. Sensors monitor the collector tank to avoid water shortages or excesses.
The generators currently rely on traditional electricity to operate, but there are plans to install solar panels so the billboard can be self-sufficient in energy.
The advert, which is located on the Panamericana Highway on the way to the beach, said at the time: "A billboard that turns air into clean drinking water is ingenuity in action," and underneath, "Admissions test March 3rd. UTEC. University of Engineering and Technology."
According to Aponte, the billboard has been a success both in technical as well as advertising terms. "In three months we have produced 9,450 litres of drinking water – that's the equivalent of the consumption of hundreds of families," he says.
At the edge of the Atacama Desert, one of the driest places on earth, Lima, Peru, receives almost no rainfall. About 700,000 people have no access to clean water for drinking or bathing. Another 600,000 of the city's 7.5 million residents rely on cisterns for their water, which must be filled by pumps or by hand and cleaned regularly.
But Lima's Pacific Coast location experiences humidity of more than 90 percent on summer days, from December to February. So engineers from Peru's University of Engineering and Technology (UTEC) have devised a way to turn that humid air into usable water. Last December, they erected a billboard in the Bujama District of Lima that by early March had produced 9450 liters (about 2500 gallons) of water.
The idea came about because UTEC was facing a slump in enrollment as the new semester approached; the engineering department wanted a way to attract more engineering students to the university. They went to Peruvian ad agency Mayo Publicidad, and the partnership of engineers and marketers crafted an advertisement that would provide a very visible demonstration of the university's engineering projects. The water-collecting billboard was born.
Electricity from the city's power lines runs the five condensers inside the billboard. Like the condenser in your home air conditioner, the ones in the UTEC billboard are cooler than the air outside. When air contacts the cooled surfaces of the condensers, the air also cools, and the water vapor in the air condenses into liquid water. After reverse-osmosis purification, the water flows down into a 20-liter storage tank at the base of the billboard. The billboard generates about 96 liters of water each day, and a simple faucet gives local residents access to the water.
The University of Engineering and Technology (UTEC) is based in Lima, Peru. Last year, staff began thinking about designing an advertising billboard to encourage students to enroll for the academic year. They approached advertising agency Mayo DraftFCB with the brief.
Alejandro Aponte, Mayo DraftFCB's creative director, takes up the story. "I started brainstorming with my co-creative director Juan Donalisio and we came up with the idea of showing these young students, through a real-life example, how engineering can offer a solution to real-life problems."
The real-life problem he alludes to is the lack of potable water in the region. Lima is the world's second-largest desert capital and about one million people don't have access to clean drinking water. The area receives just 0.51 inches of rainfall a year and residents often have to rely on other sources for their water.
"Here in the Bujama district, most of us draw water from the well," says Francisco Quilca, a Bujama resident, speaking in a UTEC video about the billboard. "It's not nice and it's polluted."
The solution, devised and delivered by the two organisations, is a billboard that generates drinking water from moisture in the air around it – annual rainfall may be low but the atmospheric humidity is about 98%.
The billboard contains five generators that condense the moisture in the air to obtain bulk water. The air passes through a series of filters, including antistatic agents, activated carbon, minerals and reverse osmosis.
The condensed water then flows under UV lamps for further purification and is collected in a tank from where it is dispensed. Sensors monitor the collector tank to avoid water shortages or excesses.
The generators currently rely on traditional electricity to operate, but there are plans to install solar panels so the billboard can be self-sufficient in energy.
The advert, which is located on the Panamericana Highway on the way to the beach, said at the time: "A billboard that turns air into clean drinking water is ingenuity in action," and underneath, "Admissions test March 3rd. UTEC. University of Engineering and Technology."
According to Aponte, the billboard has been a success both in technical as well as advertising terms. "In three months we have produced 9,450 litres of drinking water – that's the equivalent of the consumption of hundreds of families," he says.
