A team of engineers at MIT has developed an exciting new device that can collect clean drinking water straight from the air — even in some of the driest places on Earth.
This invention could offer a lifeline to the 2.2 billion people worldwide who currently lack access to safe drinking water, including more than 46 million Americans facing water insecurity.
The device, about the size of a window, uses a special sponge-like material called hydrogel to pull moisture from the air.
Even though the air might seem dry, it always contains some water vapor — and this machine is designed to soak it up, no matter how little there is.
The panel is filled with a black hydrogel that looks like bubble wrap.
These tiny dome-shaped structures swell up when they absorb moisture at night, when humidity tends to be highest, especially in desert climates.
During the day, the heat from the sun causes the water vapor to evaporate from the hydrogel. It then condenses on the glass surface of the panel, trickles down, and is collected through a simple tube — ready to drink.
What makes this device remarkable is that it doesn’t need electricity, solar panels, or batteries to work. It runs entirely on its own, using natural changes in temperature to absorb and release water.
The MIT team tested the panel for a full week in Death Valley, California — the driest place in North America — and found it could produce between 57 and 161.5 milliliters of water per day. That’s up to two-thirds of a cup of clean water, even in harsh desert conditions with as little as 21% humidity.
The goal is not just to make one panel but to create a setup where many panels can work together. These vertical devices could be placed in small arrays to supply drinking water to entire households, especially in areas where water and electricity are hard to access.
This project builds on MIT’s earlier work using hydrogels for medical uses. Researchers had already learned that hydrogels are excellent at absorbing moisture from the air.
They took this a step further by designing the hydrogel to hold more water and keep it clean.
Many similar systems in the past used salt to increase water absorption, but the salt often leaked into the collected water, making it unsafe to drink. To fix this, the team added a safe substance called glycerol to keep the salt locked inside the gel. They also avoided tiny pores that usually let salt escape.
In addition to tweaking the materials, the team improved the panel’s shape. The bubble-like domes increase surface area, allowing the gel to soak up more moisture. The outer glass chamber is coated with a special film that helps cool it down, encouraging water vapor to condense more easily.
Lead researcher Xuanhe Zhao says this is just the beginning. The device is a proof of concept, and there’s plenty of room to make it more efficient. The team hopes to see the technology scaled up and used in real-world situations — especially in places where clean water is needed the most.
This low-cost, energy-free invention could be a game-changer, offering a sustainable and practical solution to the global water crisis — one droplet at a time.
