RBV AquaTech

Water scarcity is increasingly a driver of tension - between states sharing river basins, and between communities and the industries drawing on their aquifers. A new front in this competition is digital infrastructure: AI data centers consume millions of liters of freshwater for cooling, often in already water-stressed regions, fueling disputes from Chile to Spain.

RBV AquaTech is developing a proprietary hygroscopic sorbent material that harvests freshwater directly from the atmosphere, regenerated by low-temperature waste heat - the very heat data centers and industry discard. Instead of competing with communities for groundwater, facilities using our technology can become net water producers, turning their thermal footprint into a shared local resource.

Our aim is to decouple industrial growth from freshwater extraction. Beginning with AI infrastructure, where water competition is most acute today, we intend to make waste-heat-driven atmospheric water harvesting a standard, affordable technology - deployable in any water-stressed region with an industrial heat source. By making water abundant where it is contested, we address one of the quiet root causes of instability: competition over the resource communities need most to live.

How does your project support peacebuilding and/or conflict resolution efforts in the context of a humanitarian crisis or developmental context?

Water is an escalating driver of conflict between states sharing basins, and between industries and the communities around them. RBV AquaTech generates water on site from air, powered almost only by low-grade waste heat, so a facility no longer draws on the aquifers or municipal supply local people depend on. This removes the zero-sum competition that turns scarcity into tension. The same unit works anywhere humidity and waste heat exist, offering communities without reliable infrastructure a supply that needs no pipeline, no well, and no upstream permission.

In what ways does your project contribute to the existing PeaceTech ecosystem and research efforts in a compelling way?

PeaceTech is dominated by information tools: monitoring, verification, early warning. RBV AquaTech contributes to the physical layer instead: infrastructure that removes a cause of conflict rather than observing it. Our sorbent regenerates at 45–50°C, well below the typical range of competing systems, which decides whether industrial waste heat is usable at all. We are publishing the adsorption and desorption data behind that claim jointly with Politecnico di Milano, so other groups can measure against it rather than take our word for it.

How does your work leverage collaborations and partnerships to unlock new opportunities and maximize impact?

Our testing runs at Politecnico di Milano as a scientific collaboration: chamber access in exchange for publishing the data jointly, with no equity or institutional stake involved. We are backed by the Tech Europe Foundation, and discovery interviews with data centre operators shape what we build.