WaHa President and Co-founder Chris Kay presented at a Nikkei BP seminar in Tokyo focused on the frontier of atmospheric water generation. WaHa was among a small group of international AWG companies invited to share their technology and commercial progress with an audience that included leading Japanese HVAC and industrial companies.
Chris opened by noting that WaHa was co-founded by Nobel Prize-winning chemist Professor Omar Yaghi of UC Berkeley, whose work on metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) is a key component of WaHa’s technology.
Chris walked through the WaHa Vaporator®, the sealed thermodynamic engine at the center of every WaHa machine. The WaHa Vaporator® recovers the latent heat released during condensation and feeds it back into desorption. That energy recovery is the core of WaHa’s approach, and it is protected WaHa IP. From a single energy input, the engine delivers two outputs: pure, distilled-grade water with no PFAS or microplastics, and inexpensive dry air.
He also covered the range the machines hold. WaHa units run from about 7% relative humidity and across a temperature band of roughly -20°C to 55°C, conditions where many other systems derate or stop.
On cost and scale, Chris described the work WaHa and its partners have done to bring MOF pricing down from about $5,800 per kilogram to roughly $60 per kilogram. He pointed to WaHa’s field record: seven pilot projects across four countries and regions, 54 cumulative months of operation, and 99.999% machine availability in demanding conditions in the United Arab Emirates and Sweden. WaHa’s patent portfolio spans 16 families, with 51 granted patents across 17 countries and about 50 more pending.
On manufacturing, Chris noted that WaHa can now build dozens of machines a year, expects to reach thousands by the end of 2027, and is targeting tens of thousands by 2030.
The seminar was covered by Nikkei XTECH. The full article is in Japanese and available to Nikkei subscribers.
