Growth in the global population and the modernization of human society, along with ever-worsening climate change, is pushing already scarce freshwater resources to their limits. Sorption-based atmospheric water harvesting (AWH) is an emerging process that takes advantage of atmospheric water vapour as an alternative water resource and has great potential in producing freshwater at a decentralized scale by using low-grade energy—especially solar thermal energy—in a sustainable manner. The past 5 years have witnessed great advances in AWH sorbents, system designs and new applications beyond water production. Here we utilize a unique chemical potential-based approach and critically analyse the available literature on sorption-based AWH. We provide an overview of the three-step AWH process, discuss AWH sorbents and their key features and properties, analyse water production systems, review AWH’s application to water production and beyond, and provide perspective on how managing the current challenges could lead to new opportunities.

全球人口的增长和人类社会的现代化，以及日益恶化的气候变化，正在将本已稀缺的淡水资源推向极限。基于吸附的大气水收集（AWH）是一种新兴过程，利用大气水蒸气作为替代水资源，在利用低品位能源（尤其是太阳热能）分散规模生产淡水方面具有巨大潜力。可持续的方式。过去 5 年见证了 AWH 吸附剂、系统设计和除水生产之外的新应用方面的巨大进步。在这里，我们利用独特的基于化学势的方法，并批判性地分析了基于吸附的 AWH 的现有文献。我们概述了三步 AWH 工艺，讨论了 AWH 吸附剂及其主要特征和特性，