No reason that this wouldn't work except for practicality. You'll have to displace more water than you have air to remove for it to work. It's basic fluid dynamics.

The difficulty as I see it would be the volume of air to be removed relative to the amount of water you are able to "drop". i.e. once you've pulled all the vacuum that you can with the water, it may not be enough to remove the air from the carbon/resin and produce a vacuum of sufficient quantity if at all.