A Nobel Prize-winning scientist who once grew up relying on water deliveries in a refugee community has developed a groundbreaking machine that extracts clean drinking water directly from the air, offering fresh hope to billions facing water scarcity.
Professor Omar Yaghi, who won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, invented the technology through his company, Atoco. The system uses specially engineered porous materials to capture water vapour from the atmosphere, even in hot, desert climates.
The container-sized unit can produce up to 1,000 litres (264 gallons) of clean drinking water daily without relying on rivers, boreholes or municipal water supplies.
Instead, the machine traps microscopic water molecules from the air and converts them into liquid water using ultra-low-grade heat, making it suitable for off-grid communities and emergencies where electricity and conventional water infrastructure are unavailable.
For Yaghi, the innovation is deeply personal. Growing up in a refugee settlement in Jordan, he experienced life without running water or reliable electricity. Water was delivered only once every one or two weeks, forcing families to rush and store as much as they could before the next delivery.
Those childhood experiences inspired his lifelong mission to create a dependable water source for communities facing similar hardships.
Yaghi believes the invention could transform access to clean water in remote villages, drought-prone regions, disaster-hit communities and small island nations that struggle with water shortages or depend on costly imports.
The technology also presents a potential alternative to desalination plants, which require large amounts of energy and generate highly concentrated salty waste that can harm marine ecosystems.
According to the United Nations, about 2.2 billion people worldwide still lack safely managed drinking water, while nearly 4 billion people experience severe water scarcity for at least one month every year.
Although the technology is still being prepared for wider deployment, Yaghi’s invention is already being hailed as a breakthrough in the global search for sustainable, accessible sources of clean water.
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