A jacket that pulls drinking water from the air sounds like science fiction, but researchers in Texas say it now works.

Engineers at the University of Texas at Austin developed textile threads that harvest water directly from the air. They say the technology could help people who spend long periods in places without easy access to drinking water, including hikers, campers, runners, agricultural workers and soldiers.

Research co-leader Dr Guihua Yu said: “Water harvesting from air is usually imagined as a stationary device such as a box, a panel or a large sorbent bed.

“We wanted to rethink the form of the technology.

“If the fabric itself can collect water from air, it opens a new direction for personal and portable water access.”

Yu said the textile in the jacket collects moisture and funnels it to detachable harvesting units. Those units are placed in a foldable collector piece and heated to produce water.

According to a study published in Science Advances, the jacket produced between 400 and 900 milliliters, or 0.7 to 1.5 pints, of drinkable water per day, depending on humidity levels.

The study found the textile showed a threefold to tenfold improvement at scale compared with conventional water-harvesting materials.

Study co-author Dr Keith Johnston said: “The important advance here is that the team did not simply make another material that absorbs water.

“They designed a pathway for water to move quickly, from vapor in the air, to liquid on the fiber surface, and then into the textile.

“That transport design is what allows the material to work not just in a small lab test, but in a wearable system.”

The researchers are also looking at uses beyond clothing, including backpacks, tents, emergency shelters and other outdoor gear.

They said they also plan to examine the technology for outdoor activities, remote field operations, disaster response and water access in arid or infrastructure-limited regions.

The same research team also developed a separate device that pulled drinking water from the air in the Chihuahuan Desert of New Mexico and in the more humid environment of Austin, Texas.

In tests, the researchers captured 1.3 liters, or 2.3 pints, of clean water per day in both arid and semi-humid areas.

According to a paper published in Nature Water, that equates to 4.3 liters, or 7.5 pints, of water per kilogram of moisture-capturing materials per day, which the researchers said is more than any other research group has achieved.

Study co-lead author Weixin Guan said: “This is a big stride toward practical atmospheric water harvesting.

“This goal has been incubated over years of work, from molecular design to real-world operation, and it is especially meaningful to see those pieces finally come together in a field-ready system.”

Guan said the device uses a specially engineered hydrogel fabric made from biomass-derived materials. The fabric absorbs moisture from the air, then releases it when heated by sunlight so the water can be condensed and collected.

The researchers said the regions where the device should perform best overlap with many of the most water-stressed areas, including parts of North Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

Guan added: “That makes this technology especially promising as a decentralized water solution for remote communities, emergency response and other settings where conventional water systems are difficult to build or maintain.”

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