Reading about this today;

The NBD Nano project (MIT based – Of Course) are working on a water bottle that uses superhydrophobic and superhydrophillic surfaces to ‘grab’ pure water from water vapour in the air (which is present in much of the earths air).

Supposedly they were inspired by the Namib desert beetle which has hydrophillic and hydrophobic lumps on it’s back which grab water from the air and then channel the droplets into it’s mouth. Bottle is still in early stages of R&D but a pretty promising product for use by aid agencies operating in some of the most inhospitable regions of the world I’d say! Apparently it will be pretty cheap too.

Obviously no pictures yet but how do you all think it will actually work in design terms? Where will the hydrophobic and hydrophillic surfaces be on the bottle to allow it to refill itself?

http://astounde.com/water-bottle-harvests-water-from-air/