Bionic collection system for fog-dew harvesting inspired from desert beetle

Abstract

Obtaining clean water resources from the air is an important method to solve the water shortage problem in arid and semi-arid areas. Improving the efficiency of material water collection from the air remains a huge challenge that needs to be overcome. Inspired by natural creatures, a new combined mist dew collector is proposed. The collecting part of the system has a gradient structure with alternating convexity and endows it with different chemical wettability. Janus sponge will be used as the storage part and mechanically assembled together to form a fog/dew collection system. This combination approach can improve collection efficiency by adjusting the liquid behavior throughout the entire fog collection process, including nucleation of droplets during the capture process, high-speed transmission on conical channels, and separation and storage of droplets from Janus sponge. The synergistic effect of conical capture and sponge separation collection improves the efficiency of fog collection. Compared with traditional fog collection structures, our proposed collection system significantly improves the efficiency of fog collection. Meanwhile, our collection system can effectively collect dew under conventional subcooling conditions. The readily available low-cost raw materials, easy to assemble and disassemble, and easy to carry, our proposed fog/dew collection system combines fog and dew collection as a promising solution to alleviate freshwater shortages in many underdeveloped, arid, and island areas.