Man, if there's two things you don't have enough of when you're deployed in the desert and insurgents keep blowing up your fuel runs, it's beer and Wii. Wait no, it's diesel and water. Luckily researchers have devised a way for soldiers to turn one into the other. Membranes full of tiny tubes condense vehicle and generator exhaust, turning the vapor into liquid water and stripping contaminants along the way.
The average soldier needs about seven gallons of water a day — for drinking, but also for cooking and bathing and so forth. This new tech could make that amount from burning about seven gallons of diesel fuel. Some of the water would even be directly drinkable, and 65 to 85 percent of it would be usable for something.
