Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of Texas at Arlington , 500 W. First Street, Woolf Hall 226, Arlington, Texas 76019, United States.
ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2014 Sep 24;6(18):16257-66. doi: 10.1021/am504457f. Epub 2014 Sep 5.
In a recent work, we explored the feeding mechanism of a shorebird to transport liquid drops by repeatedly opening and closing its beak. In this work, we apply the corresponding results to develop a new artificial fog collector. The collector includes two nonparallel plates. It has three advantages in comparison with existing artificial collectors: (i) easy fabrication, (ii) simple design to scale up, and (iii) active transport of condensed water drops. Two collectors have been built. A small one with dimensions of 4.2 × 2.1 × 0.05 cm(3) (length × width × thickness) was first built and tested to examine (i) the time evolution of condensed drop sizes and (ii) the collection processes and efficiencies on the glass, SiO2, and SU-8 plates. Under similar experimental conditions, the amount of water collected per unit area on the small collector is about 9.0, 4.7, and 3.7 times, respectively, as much as the ones reported for beetles, grasses, and metal wires, and the total amount of water collected is around 33, 18, and 15 times. On the basis of the understanding gained from the tests on the small collector, a large collector with dimensions of 26 × 10 × 0.2 cm(3) was further built and tested, which was capable of collecting 15.8 mL of water during a period of 36 min. The amount of water collected, when it is scaled from 36 to 120 min, is about 878, 479, or 405 times more than what was collected by individual beetles, grasses, or metal wires.
在最近的一项工作中，我们研究了一种涉禽通过反复开合喙部来输送液滴的进食机制。在这项工作中，我们将相应的结果应用于开发一种新型人工雾收集器。该收集器包括两个非平行板。与现有的人工收集器相比，它具有三个优点：(i)易于制造，(ii)易于扩展的简单设计，以及 (iii)冷凝液滴的主动传输。已经构建了两个收集器。首先构建并测试了一个尺寸为 4.2×2.1×0.05 cm(3)(长×宽×厚)的小型收集器，以检验(i)冷凝液滴尺寸的时间演化，以及(ii)玻璃、SiO2 和 SU-8 板上的收集过程和效率。在相似的实验条件下，小型收集器上单位面积收集的水量分别约为报道的甲虫、草和金属丝的 9.0、4.7 和 3.7 倍，总收集水量约为 33、18 和 15 倍。基于从小型收集器测试中获得的认识，进一步构建和测试了一个尺寸为 26×10×0.2 cm(3)的大型收集器，该收集器在 36 分钟的时间内能够收集 15.8 毫升的水。当将收集时间从 36 分钟扩展到 120 分钟时，收集的水量分别是单个甲虫、草或金属丝收集量的约 878、479 或 405 倍。
