Yan Defeng, Chen Yang, Liu Jinming, Song Jinlong
State Key Laboratory of High-Performance Precision Manufacturing, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, 116024, P. R. China.
Key Laboratory for Micro/Nano Technology and System of Liaoning Province, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, 116024, P. R. China.
Small. 2023 Sep;19(36):e2301745. doi: 10.1002/smll.202301745. Epub 2023 May 8.
Freshwater scarcity crisis threatens human life and economic security. Collecting water from the fog seems to be an effective method to defuse this crisis. Nonetheless, the existing fog collection methods have the limitations of the low fog collection rate and efficiency because of their gravity-based droplet shedding. Here, the aforementioned limitations are resolved by proposing a new fog collection method based on the self-driven jet phenomenon of the mini fog droplets. A prototype fog collector (PFC) composed of a square container that is filled with water is first designed. Both sides of the PFC are superhydrophobic but covered with superhydrophilic pore array. The mini fog droplets touching the side wall are easily captured and spontaneously and rapidly penetrate into the pores to form jellyfish-like jets, which greatly increases the droplet shedding frequency, guaranteeing a higher fog collection rate and efficiency compared with the existing fog collection methods. Based on this, a more practical super-fast fog collector is finally successfully designed and fabricated which is assembled by several PFCs. This work is hoping to resolve the water crisis in some arid but foggy regions.
淡水短缺危机威胁着人类生命和经济安全。从雾气中收集水分似乎是化解这一危机的有效方法。然而，现有的雾气收集方法由于基于重力的液滴脱落，存在雾气收集率和效率低的局限性。在此，通过提出一种基于微小雾滴自驱动喷射现象的新型雾气收集方法，解决了上述局限性。首先设计了一种由装满水的方形容器组成的原型雾气收集器（PFC）。PFC的两侧是超疏水的，但覆盖着超亲水孔阵列。接触侧壁的微小雾滴很容易被捕获，并自发快速地渗透到孔中形成水母状射流，这大大提高了液滴脱落频率，与现有的雾气收集方法相比，保证了更高的雾气收集率和效率。基于此，最终成功设计并制造出一种更实用的超快速雾气收集器，它由几个PFC组装而成。这项工作有望解决一些干旱但多雾地区的水危机。
