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

With the help of very high-power laser beams, researchers at the University of Rochester have created micro and nanostructures that turn metals black and make their surfaces very easy to keep clean and dry. The advance could help prevent icing and rust, collect heat more effectively and perhaps even translate to other materials, leading to water-repelling electronics.

There are many super-hydrophobic coatings out there that can quickly and effectively repel water and other liquids to keep metals rust-free and t-shirtspristine. The problem, however, is that they rely on chemicals that can eventually wear off and leave the underlying material at the mercy of the elements.

Professor Chunlei Guo and colleagues at the University of Rochester have found a way to treat metals so that they themselves become permanently averse to water, or super-hydrophobic. They have achieved this with the help of femtosecond lasers, which shoot extremely high-power pulses over a very short time (a femtosecond is a millionth of a billionth of a second). The power is high enough to engrave micro and nanoscale structures into the metal and change its properties at the surface. Read more

Generally, water repellent objects and those that attract or absorb water have very different microscopic-level attributes that endow them with their behavior. For example, the myriad tiny hairs on a gecko’s body help it to efficiently repel water, whilst specially treated cotton designed for harvesting water from the air contains millions of tiny pores that draw in liquid. Now researchers have discovered a way to use a single type of material to perform both functions, switching between liquid attraction and liquid repulsion, simply through the application of an electric voltage.

Developed by a team of scientists from TU Wien, the University of Zurich, and KU Levin, the new material alters its water-handling behavior by changing its surface structure at the nanoscale to effect a change at the macroscale. Specifically, the behavior of liquid on the new material is as a result of altering the “stiction” (static friction) of the molecular surface. One with a high-level of stiction keeps moisture clinging to it, whilst one with a low-level allows the liquid to run right off. Read more

With climate change predicted to increase the severity and frequency of drought events in many part of the world, water conservation is a growing concern. New water retention technology developed at Michigan State University (MSU) could help quench the thirst of parched crops while using less water, not only enabling crops to better deal with drought, but also improving crop yields in marginal areas.

Coarse, sandy soils found in semi-arid and arid regions have large pores that absorb large quantities of rainfall. However, they retain less than 20 percent of the water in the root zone that sits between the surface and depths of 60 to 70 centimeters (24 to 27 inches), leaching losses of nutrients and other chemicals into ground water as the water drains away. Read more