For many people who perform high-output outdoor activities, straight-up water in their hydration pack just isn’t enough – they want water with an added energy supplement. The problem is, the pack’s bladder can retain the color and taste of such concoctions. That’s the reason Infuze was created. It adds a supplement to hydration-pack water, downstream from the bladder.

Instead of having one hose going straight from the bladder to the mouthpiece, Infuze-equipped third-party hydration packs have one hose going from the bladder to the shoulder-strap-mounted Infuze device, then another hose running from it to the mouthpiece. Read more

According to the latest report by the World Health Organization, nearly two billion people lack access to clean drinking water. To address this problem, researchers from UC Berkeley and MIT have created a solar-powered device that can be used in places like the desert to harvest water from a relatively untapped resource: air, which contains an estimated 13,000 trillion liters of water.

To be fair, the idea of harvesting water from air isn’t new. Companies such as Warka Water, EcoloBlue and Water Gen have already shown that this can be done. However these water-acquisition systems usually require certain conditions in order to work, such as high humidity levels or a power source. The team behind the solar harvester, led by UC Berkeley’s Omar Yaghi, wanted to develop a solution that could be used even by those living in arid and drought-hit regions without access to electricity. Read more

When you wash your hands or rinse off soapy dishes under a running tap, most of the water just flows out of the faucet and down the drain without being used – or at least, that’s what the folks at Swedish firm Altered tell us. That’s why they created the Altered:Nozzle, which atomizes tap water into a fine mist. According to the company, the result is a 98 percent reduction in water use, with no loss in functionality.

Described as “the world’s most extreme water-saving nozzle,” the brass-bodied device is simply attached to the end of an existing faucet in about 30 seconds.

When set to its Mist mode, it uses 0.18 liters (.05 US gallons) of water per minute. Although only about 2 percent the flow rate of an unadorned tap, the increased surface area created by the high-speed mist reportedly allows it to perform tasks such as washing and rinsing just as effectively. Read more

Water injection has recently found a home on the BMW M4 GTS, but the technology hasn’t really drifted down to more mundane metal yet. Bosch wants to change that, offering up its water injection technology to other manufacturers with the promise of more power and better fuel efficiency from compact turbocharged engines.

The main benefit of water injection lies in lowering combustion temperatures within the engine. Current compact turbocharged motors are pushing their limits, both in terms of performance and fuel efficiency. Adding water to the air/fuel mixture lifts those boundaries by actively lowering the temperature within the combustion chamber, allowing a higher compression ratio without the risk of knock. Read more

When a car’s air conditioner is running, water vapor in the air accumulates on its condenser, changing into a liquid state and then dripping to the ground. Doug Martin, a powertrain controls engineer at Ford, didn’t like the idea of all that water being wasted. That’s why he created a prototype system which collects that condensation, and repurposes it as drinking water within the car.

Martin was initially inspired by a billboard in Peru, that captures humidity in the air and renders it into drinking water. Working with colleague John Rollinger, he proceeded to build the On-the-Go H2O system, in which air conditioner condensation is collected, filtered, and then pumped into a faucet in the car’s console. Read more