Abstract
Exponential rise in the global population, agriculture expansion, and the adverse effects of climate change are some of the primary drivers of the escalating demand for available water resources. The remarkable ability of organisms to endure in arid and semi-arid regions through their unique water collection systems serves as a source of inspiration for combating the freshwater crisis. Leveraging the design principles of the Salsola crassa plant, we report a strategy to recreate its structure by devising self-similar carbon nanotube-nonwoven nanostructured material with contrasting wetting regimes, seamlessly integrating the hydrophobic three-dimensional (3D) needlepunched nonwoven and an ensemble of weakly hydrophilic MWCNTs via vacuum filtration process. Through a carefully crafted combinatorial strategy that emphasises realising the utmost number of fibre-fibre contacts by downsizing the fibre diameter in nonwovens, forging the steep asymmetric wettability and enabling the fog interaction from the nonwoven side yielded an exemplary fog harvesting rate of 2167 mg cm−2 h−1 (∼520 L m−2 day−1) that outperforms the state-of-the-art nonwoven based materials. Further, the vital metrics of the 3D intricate porous structure of nonwoven materials have been deciphered using X-ray microcomputed analysis and correlated with their fog harvesting characteristics.
Published Version
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