Access to clean drinking water is one of the most pressing challenges of our time, and scientists have now found an unusually wearable solution to it.
Engineers at the University of Texas at Austin have developed a prototype jacket that harvests drinking water directly from the air around it, using a specially engineered textile that absorbs atmospheric moisture and converts it into clean, drinkable water through a simple heating process.
In real world field tests conducted across multiple climates, the jacket produced between 400 and 900 millilitres of drinkable water per day depending on local humidity conditions, performing at a level that is three to ten times better than many existing atmospheric water harvesting materials at comparable scale.
The research was published in Science Advances by a team led by Professor Guihua Yu of the Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Texas Materials Institute.How the water harvesting jacket actually worksAt the heart of the jacket is a biomass derived hydrogel fibre that has been engineered to do something most water harvesting materials struggle with at scale, not just absorb moisture from the air but actively transport it through the fabric in a controlled and efficient pathway.
