Zhang Kaiteng, Chen Huawei, Ran Tong, Zhang Liwen, Zhang Yi, Chen Dengke, Wang Yan, Guo Yurun, Liu Guang
School of Mechanical Engineering and Automation, Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Biomedical Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, China.
ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2022 Jul 27;14(29):33993-34001. doi: 10.1021/acsami.2c06803. Epub 2022 Jul 7.
Fog harvesting is an important method to solve the water shortage in arid and semi-arid areas by collecting water from air. Improving fog harvesting efficiency is still a big challenge to be overcome. Herein, under the inspiration of natural creatures, a novel harvesting structure that couples a hierarchical microchannel (HMC) needle with the Janus membrane by taking a conical pore as their junction is proposed. Such an HMC-conical pore-Janus membrane system can improve the harvesting efficiency by regulation of liquid behavior in the whole fog harvesting process involving droplet capture from air, high speed transport on the microchannel, and droplet detachment from Janus. The synergistic effects of the hierarchical channel-conical pore-Janus structure are exploited in terms of capture, transport, and detachment capabilities, and their underlying mechanism to enhance fog harvesting efficiency is built. Compared with the traditional harvesting structure, the proposed hierarchical channel-conical-Janus coupling mode was demonstrated to improve fog harvesting efficiency by 90%. Such a coupled system has potential applications in efficient fog harvesting systems, microfluidic devices, and liquid manipulation.
雾收集是通过从空气中收集水分来解决干旱和半干旱地区水资源短缺的一种重要方法。提高雾收集效率仍然是一个有待克服的巨大挑战。在此，受自然生物的启发，提出了一种新颖的收集结构，该结构通过以锥形孔作为连接点，将分级微通道（HMC）针与Janus膜相结合。这种HMC-锥形孔-Janus膜系统可以通过在整个雾收集过程中调节液体行为来提高收集效率，该过程包括从空气中捕获水滴、在微通道上高速传输以及从Janus上分离水滴。从捕获、传输和分离能力方面利用分级通道-锥形孔-Janus结构的协同效应，并建立了其提高雾收集效率的潜在机制。与传统收集结构相比，所提出的分级通道-锥形-Janus耦合模式被证明可将雾收集效率提高90%。这种耦合系统在高效雾收集系统、微流控装置和液体操作方面具有潜在应用。
