Air moisture is contained even in dry air, but this air requires significant cooling in order to release its moisture by condensation. Engineers from ASML, Veldhoven, the Netherlands, now designed a piping system that makes air condense by pressing it deep into the ground where ambient temperatures are around 10 °C, providing the needed cooling for condensation.

An electric fan sucks in warm air at one end of the piping system, while cooled air as well as water is exhausted at the other end into an underground cistern. A pump is needed to bring the water back to the surface. As this piping system might supply desert regions with potable water, the pump could get its energy from a solar collection system.
A particular advantage of gaining potable water from air moisture is that no purification or distillation is needed.

• Making drinking water from air,
  water 21, August 2012, 72.