Scientists Create Water-Harvesting Technology That Uses Kitchen Scraps and Seashells – BitRss

Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have figured out how to turn everyday throwaways into a technology that pulls clean water straight from the atmosphere.

The team used different organic materials to develop “molecularly functionalized biomass hydrogels” that extract drinkable water from air using only mild heat, producing nearly four gallons daily per kilogram of material—about three times more than typical water-harvesting technologies.

“This opens up an entirely new way to think about sustainable water collection, marking a big step towards practical water harvesting systems for households and small community scale,” said Professor Guihua Yu, who led the research team.

The research is relevant today, considering nearly 4.4 billion people have restricted access to safe drinking water, according to recent studies. That’s nearly 50% of the entire human population.

Extracting water out of air is not really new, but what sets this approach apart is its use of natural materials that would otherwise end up in landfills—making it safer and more environmentally friendly too. The researchers successfully converted cellulose (found in plants), starch (from food…