When it comes to the word "harp", the image of medieval stringed musical instrument probably pops in your mind. But now a group of engineering researchers from Virginia Tech has come up with their harp-inspired water collecting device.
The moisture in the air, often appearing as small droplet in fog, are critical water resource for communities that live in the arid climate. Harvesting water from fog is a tradition in a lot of different places. People use large pieces of vertical canvas to trap droplets of water and collect them at the bottom with a trough, a technique known as a fog fence.
Previous designs are based on wired meshes, which poses a two-sided problem: too coarse, trapping efficiency is slow; too fine, droplets become stuck and unable to flow down the collection trough. The new harp-like design turn metal wire of different diameters into a vertical array. Their mid-sized wires exhibited the best fog collection rate, topping mesh-like design.
Source: ACS via Youtube