We would like to congratulate Tamara Theimel from IGTE on winning the 2025 Undine Award in the “Source of Life” category! The award, by the Josef Wund Foundation, honors scientific projects focused on water – with the aim of promoting solutions for a sustainable future. The winning projects are distinguished by their innovation, societal relevance, and international impact. Ms. Theimel’s research on autonomous drinking water generation from air in particularly arid regions impressed the jury with its great societal potential.
The award ceremony took place on June 5, 2025, at the foundation's headquarters in Stuttgart – a special moment that honors years of scientific work and paves the way for practical implementation.
Research and Follow-Up Project: “Autonomous Drinking Water Generation in Particularly Arid Regions”
With a well-considered, systematic approach, Tamara Theimel has been further developing the sorptive process for water harvesting from air into a autonomous and energy-efficient solution for obtaining drinking water in arid regions. The technical development was initiated within the KossWaL project (Continuous Solar-Sorptive Water harvesting from Air in arid regions), funded by Vector Foundation.
After the successful setup and testing of a laboratory demonstration unit, a full-scale demonstration unit was constructed on the roof of the institute's building as part of the AIRWATER project (Development of a compact system for independent and continuous solar-sorptive water harvesting from the air in arid regions). This demonstration unit was built in cooperation with project partners from industry (HydroTec Gesellschaft für ökologische Verfahrenstechnik mbH, Selb/Germany; Richter und Stegner Steuerungstechnik GmbH, Röslau/Germany) and tested under various conditions, the proof of concept was provided.
The follow-up project WATmosfAIR (Development of an exploatation strategy for solar-sorptive water harvesting from atmospheric air in arid regions), funded by the German Federal Environmental Foundation (DBU), has been in progress since January 1, 2025, with Cameroon selected for a case study.
Within this project, the concept shall be adapted to the conditions in Cameroon and optimized. The objective is to set up a demonstraion unit on site in cooperation with partners from the University of Maroua in Cameroon and to evaluate the optimized regarding its potential for transferability to other arid regions.
