This UAE company produces clean water from thin air: UAE-based green tech company Baynunah Laboratories has officially launched a new product Ma Hawa that extracts potable water directly from the atmosphere at the Gitex Global tech show, Gulf Today reports.

How it works: Ma Hawa’s air-to-water generators leverage heat exchange tech patented by Watergen, transforming the surrounding air into potable water while conserving energy, the company notes on its website. Ma Hawa’s generators contain three filters — nano ceramic, carbon filter, and metals — that purify water vapor into drinkable water. The air is filtered through four stages to rid the water it generates from pollutants and bacteria. The company’s device also adds minerals like magnesium and calcium to enhance the water’s purity, Ma Hawa Head of Marketing Amro Ismaeal told Gulf Today.

The advantages: The company says the water it generates from atmospheric water vapor is free of nitrate, sulfate, phosphate, and chloride. It’s also low in sodium, and contains less contaminants compared to water extracted from natural reservoirs. “Water from air sources is the purest available … the source is unlimited and renewable given the natural hydrologic cycle, which continuously distills ground reservoirs to humidity,” the company says.

Different shapes and sizes for different applications: The company’s range of products includes a portable air-to-water generator that can produce up to 25 liters of water. For commercial use cases, the company also offers its GEN-M1 product, which it notes is a medium-scale portable unit that has a daily 220 liter production capacity without the need for infrastructure. For residential and office settings, the company offers a unit that produces 30 liters daily.

Current production capacity: The company’s production capacity currently reaches some 3k bottles of water daily, Ismaeal told the news outlet, and is expected to increase to 4.5k liters on an hourly basis when the company expands its factories in the Khalifa Economic Zones in Abu Dhabi by mid-November.

Why does this matter regionally? The MENA region is the most water-scarce region of the world, according to the Public Reference Bureau. Some 6.3% of the global population live in the region, and MENA only has 1.4% of the world’s renewable freshwater sources.