UT austin researchers develop a jacket that pulls drinkable water from the air

a jacket designed for water harvesting

Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin are experimenting with a prototype jacket capable of atmospheric water harvesting. Their piece gathers moisture directly from the air through a specially engineered textile, thus turning a familiar piece of outdoor clothing into a mobile water-collecting surface.

The project shifts a technology often imagined as a box, panel, or fixed sorbent bed into fabric. Developed by engineers at UT Austin’s Cockrell School of Engineering, the jacket uses a biomass-derived hydrogel fiber that absorbs ambient moisture and moves it through the textile toward detachable harvesting units.

Once removed, those units are placed inside a foldable collector and heated, producing drinkable water from the moisture held in the material.

hydrogel fibers move moisture through cloth

Inside the water harvesting jacket, the textile works through transport as much as absorption. The researchers at UT Austin designed a pathway that carries water from vapor in the air to liquid on the fiber surface, then into the fabric system, which allows the material to operate at the scale of a wearable piece instead of remaining a small laboratory sample.

In testing, the jacket produced between 400 and 900 milliliters of drinkable water per day, around 14 to 30 ounces, depending on humidity levels. Compared with conventional water-harvesting materials, the textile showed a three- to ten-fold improvement at scale, pointing to the importance of fiber structure and movement within the cloth.

from jacket pocket to outdoor gear

The prototype jacket is still a research object, but its form gives the water harvesting technology an immediate design language. A black jacket fitted with pale woven material suggests how water collection could be carried in a front pocket, stitched into a backpack, or built into the surface of a tent. The system adds a second function to gear people already wear or pack, especially in places where taps, pipes, and carried bottles fall short.

The team sees future uses across hiking, camping, remote field work, disaster response, and water-scarce regions with limited infrastructure. Clothing is only one beginning. Backpacks, shelters, and outdoor equipment could become distributed surfaces for collecting moisture, turning soft goods into small-scale water systems that travel with the person using them.

a wider study in air and water

The jacket arrives alongside a separate atmospheric water-harvesting device from the same UT Austin research team, tested in the hot Chihuahuan Desert of New Mexico and in the more humid conditions of Austin. That device captured 1.3 liters of clean water per day in both arid and semi-humid settings, using the same broader idea of drawing moisture from the atmosphere and releasing it through heat.

At the center of both studies is a simple shift in scale and placement. Instead of asking water-harvesting devices to sit apart from the body or landscape, the researchers are testing how the technology can be worn, folded, carried, and built into existing objects. In the jacket, water collection becomes part of the fabric itself, held close to the body until heat turns absorbed air into something that can be poured.

project info:

research: The University of Texas at Austin
lead researcher: Yuanyuan ‘Alba’ Guo
location: Austin, Texas, USA
status: research prototype