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A jacket that harvests drinking water from the air (news.utexas.edu)
37 points by ilreb 2 hours ago
8 comments

Makes sense since we're speedrunning the other parts of the Butlerian jihad
I don't know about the rest of you, but if somebody spots Shai-hulud out in the Sahara I'm outta here.
Out of here to where?
Outside of the environment?
Nearly all passive water-from-air devices described in articles are based on false claims. Peltier-based, desiccant/absorption/adsorption based, etc. All end up not working, or not existing. This has been common for ~10 years.

Which category does this fall into?:

  - Fraud
  - Incompetence / misunderstanding that wasn't cleared up prior to publishing an article
  - Neither; this works as expected
The design seems reasonable. It seems like a scaled down version of this MIT one that uses similar principles:

https://news.mit.edu/2025/window-sized-device-taps-air-safe-...

So my vote is for working as expected.

depending on actual conditions you are in, it could potentially double (or more) the time before you die of thirst if it was your only source of water.
I do wonder about the tradeoff between excess perspiration due to wearing heavier materials versus the ability to collect water, especially on the days where replenishing fluids is most crucial.
I wonder if it has microplastics, but probably depends what kind of fabric was used
works in the rain
My first thought was “yay a stillsuit” - but this grabs moisture from the air, not the wearer’s body. So no. No stillsuit yet.
Seconded. I wonder which would taste better though.
Would you want it? I thought you were supposed to urinate and defecate in the suit so as to maximally retain moisture.
Lisan al-Gaib!
Just wear it in reverse ;)

A big step towards a stillsuit anyways ;)

Vaporware has never tasted so good or been so refreshing.
Vaporwear*
This sort of thing can't work as it would break basic laws of thermodynamics. Best case it's a dehumidifier with extra steps.
Why would it break the laws? Per the article it uses the heat from sunlight to do some of its work, it's not some kind of magic fabric.
So a dehumidifier with extra steps.
"extra steps" meaning wearable dehumidifier. Are there other wearable dehumidifiers to produce drinking water? I don't think so.

A reductive assessment (to a specific feature) of a novel idea, does not make it less interesting.