Investigating the Effect of Mesh Structure and Mesh Retaining Module on the Rate of Fog Harvesting

Document Type : Research Article

Authors

1 Faculty of Chemical Engineering, Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran.

2 Faculty of Textile Engineering, Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

Nowadays, the impact of water scarcity is felt more than ever due to population growth, environmental changes, and increased industrial as well as agricultural developments.  Thus, it is imperative to harvest water from every available source such as fog. The process of harvesting water from fog which is a cost-effective method has attracted the attention of many researchers trying to increase the efficiency of this method in various ways. In this research, a practical test system is presented to investigate the influence of the mesh and the mesh retaining module on the rate of fog harvesting. 6 sets of modules and meshes were exposed to the fog flow and after taking the results, the most effective factor between the meshes and the module was determined. All factors affecting fog harvesting were kept constant during the test, and only the effects of the mesh and module were examined. Teflon yarns mesh which increased the fog harvesting by 23 to 77%, was chosen as the best mesh, while the Modular Funnel-Large Fog Collector module which increased the rate of fog collection by 7 to 9 times was considered as the best module. This unique effectiveness should be attributed to the aerodynamic property of the MF-LFC module, which uses the rate of fog flow effectively in order to increase water harvesting.

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