MIT Invents “Bubble Wrap” That Pulls Fresh Water From The Air…Even In The Driest Places In The World

MIT researchers have invented a new water-harvesting device — a high-tech version of “bubble wrap” — that can pull safe drinking water straight from the air, even in extreme environments like Death Valley, the driest desert in North America, according to LiveScience.

In a study published June 11 in Nature Water, the team described how their innovation could help address global water scarcity. “It works wherever you may find water vapor in the air,” the researchers wrote.

The device is built from hydrogel, a material that can absorb large amounts of water, sandwiched between two glass layers resembling a window. At night, the hydrogel draws moisture from the air. During the day, a special coating on the glass keeps it cool, allowing water to condense and drip into a collection system.

The hydrogel is molded into dome shapes — likened to “a sheet of bubble wrap” — that swell when absorbing moisture. These domes increase surface area, helping the material absorb more water.

LiveScience writes that the system was tested for a week in Death Valley, a region spanning California and Nevada that holds the record as the hottest and driest place in North America.

Despite the harsh conditions, the harvester consistently produced between 57 and 161.5 milliliters of water daily — about a quarter to two-thirds of a cup. In more humid regions, researchers expect even greater yields. According to MIT representatives, this approach outperforms earlier water-from-air technologies and does so without needing electricity.

One major breakthrough was solving a known problem with hydrogel-based water harvesters: lithium salts used to improve absorption often leak into the water, making it unsafe. The new design adds glycerol, which stabilizes the salt and keeps leakage to under 0.06 parts per million — a level the U.S. Geological Survey deems safe for groundwater.

Though a single panel can’t supply an entire household, its small footprint means several can be installed together. The team estimates that eight 3-by-6-foot (1-by-2-meter) panels could provide enough drinking water for a household in areas lacking reliable sources. Compared to the cost of bottled water in the U.S., the system could pay for itself in under a month and remain functional for at least a year.

“We imagine that you could one day deploy an array of these panels, and the footprint is very small because they are all vertical,” said Xuanhe Zhao, an MIT professor and co-author of the study. “Now people can build it even larger, or make it into parallel panels, to supply drinking water to people and achieve real impact.”

The researchers plan to continue testing the device in other low-resource areas to better understand its performance under different environmental conditions.