University of Texas researchers turn everyday biomass into a machine that makes water from air

What if food scraps, discarded branches and seashells could help produce drinking water from the air? Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have developed a new class of biomass-based hydrogels that can capture atmospheric moisture and release it as clean water using relatively mild heat. The approach, described in the peer-reviewed journal Advanced Materials by Weixin Guan, Yaxuan Zhao, Chuxin Lei, Yuyang Wang, Kai Wu and Guihua Yu, could offer a more sustainable route to atmospheric water harvesting . Rather than relying on a single specialised synthetic material, the researchers developed a molecular engineering strategy that can transform natural polysaccharides such as cellulose, starch and chitosan into water-absorbing hydrogels. In outdoor testing, the cellulose-based material produced up to 14.19 kilograms of water per kilogram of sorbent per day under the tested conditions. The work, published as ‘