Charoensook Daleanna, Nipu Shah Md Ashiquzzaman, Girish Ana, He Qingqing, Cheng Shan, Chapman Kevin, Xie Nathan, Li Cindy Xiangjia, Yang Yang
Department of Mechanical Engineering, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA 92182, USA.
School for Engineering of Matter, Transport and Energy, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA.
Biomimetics (Basel). 2024 Dec 3;9(12):734. doi: 10.3390/biomimetics9120734.
Collecting fog water is crucial for dry areas since natural moisture and fog are significant sources of freshwater. Sustainable and energy-efficient water collection systems can take a page out of the cactus's playbook by mimicking its native fog gathering process. Inspired by the unique geometric structure of the cactus spine, we fabricated a bioinspired artificial fog collector consisting of cactus spines featuring barbs of different sizes and angles on the surfaces for water collection and a series of microcavities within microchannels inspired by Nepenthes Alata on the bottom to facilitate water flowing to the reservoir. However, replicating the actual shape of the cactus spine using conventional manufacturing techniques is challenging, and research in this area has faced a limitation in enhancing water-collecting efficiency. Here, we turned to 3D printing technology (vat photopolymerization) to create bio-mimetic fog collectors with a variety of geometric shapes that would allow for the most effective conveyance and gathering of water. Various barb sizes, angles between each barb in a single array, spine and barb arrangements, and quantity of barbs were tested experimentally and numeric analysis was carried out to measure the volume of water collected and optimize the mass rate. The result shows that optimal fog collection is with a mass flow rate of 0.7433 g/min, with = 900 μm, = 45°, = 90°, = 2, and = 5. This study presents a sustainable and ecologically sound method for efficiently collecting humid air, which is expected to be advantageous for the advancement of future-oriented fog-collection, water-transportation, and separation technologies.
收集雾水对干旱地区至关重要，因为自然水分和雾是淡水的重要来源。可持续且节能的集水系统可以借鉴仙人掌的经验，模仿其天然的雾收集过程。受仙人掌刺独特几何结构的启发，我们制造了一种仿生人工雾收集器，它由表面带有不同尺寸和角度倒刺的仙人掌刺组成用于集水，底部有一系列受猪笼草启发的微通道内的微腔以促进水流入蓄水池。然而，使用传统制造技术复制仙人掌刺的实际形状具有挑战性，并且该领域的研究在提高集水效率方面面临限制。在此，我们转向3D打印技术（光聚合反应）来制造具有各种几何形状的仿生雾收集器，这些形状将允许最有效地输送和收集水。对各种倒刺尺寸、单个阵列中每个倒刺之间的角度、刺和倒刺的排列以及倒刺数量进行了实验测试，并进行了数值分析以测量收集的水量并优化质量流量。结果表明，最佳雾收集的质量流量为0.7433 g/min，其中 = 900 μm， = 45°， = 90°， = 2， = 5。本研究提出了一种可持续且生态合理的高效收集潮湿空气的方法，有望对未来的雾收集、水运输和分离技术的发展具有优势。
