Fog Harvesting Technology to Solve Water Scarcity

As our population grows, in addition to the seemingly never-ending cycle of consumerism, businesses of various sectors and industries have to constantly and actively produce goods. This hyperactive production has, without a doubt, led to an abundance of pollutants.

Whether in the form of air pollution or water pollution, these pollutants endanger not only our earth but also everyone in it by contaminating the two things we consume and ingest every day. Though, according to the UN, access to safely managed drinkable water has increased from 69% to 73% between 2015 and 2022, over 2.2 billion people still lack this basic need.

Researchers from ETH Zurich and the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research are attempting to solve both the issue of pollutants and water scarcity by building a fog-harvesting technology that turns polluted fog into clean, drinkable water without much energy waste.

Efforts for Earth and the People

A number of companies worldwide have attempted to rid of pollutants and provide access to clean water by conducting sustainable practices, developing more efficient water management technologies, and decreasing overall water usage.

Xylem, a water technology company based in Washington, DC, manufactures and offers water distribution systems with better desalination* processes as well as engineering and design services to help create sustainable water infrastructure for commercial and residential buildings. Nestle is working on reducing its water consumption by investing in water-efficient technologies in its manufacturing plants.

Some of these efforts to rid of the water shortage also involve big business collaborations with government officials and NGOs*. Unilever, which is currently improving its wastewater treatment processes to make its water resources clean and safe, also works with the UN’s Children’s Funds (UNICEF) to provide clean water to people in developing countries.

*Desalination: The process by which the dissolved mineral salts in water are removed.

*NGOs: Non-government organizations, groups that function independently of any government, usually non-profit, that serve social or political goals.

All these efforts to resolve the water crisis have certainly not been a waste. Although most of these companies, governments, and NGOs haven’t been able to create an impact globally, they are constantly taking steps to make global change happen and are assisting, at the very least, those close to them in proximity along the way.

Believing that they can do more for the Earth and the people as well, researchers from ETH Zurich and MPI for Polymer Research, which include Ritwick Ghosh, Adrien Baut, Giorgio Belleri, Michael Kappl, Hans Jürgen Butt, and Thomas M. Schutzius, are maximally utilizing their resources to build a technology that transforms fog into liquid all while purifying it from pollutants.

Fog to Liquid to Clean Water

The researchers created a lattice of metal wires with nanoengineered meshes, coated with polymers and titanium dioxide to achieve their fog-harvesting and pollutant-filtering process. The polymers are used to capture water droplets onto the device, which are then rapidly drained into a container. The titanium dioxide plays a vital chemical part as it breaks down the molecules found in the droplets to clean and purify them.

The team tested the net devices in a laboratory and a small pilot plant in Zurich, which resulted in about eight percent of the water collected by the nets. Though this doesn’t seem like much, the device managed to break down 94% of harmful compounds in the polluted liquid, which would have been completely undrinkable and unusable without the chemical process.

Though the device can only produce clean water slowly, for now, the team’s efforts have proved to be successful, and it seems that the results will remain steady and certainly useful. This device is also said by the team to require little maintenance and energy, as the materials used to create it rely on solar panels for power. Half an hour of sunlight reactivates the very vital titanium dioxide for 24 hours through photocatalytic memory*.

*Photocatalytic Memory: A phenomenon where a photocatalyst can continue to catalyze reactions even after the light source is turned off, as photocatalysts can store electrons and holes used to drive chemical reactions in the dark.

Current Implementations

With the device able to convert and purify fog into drinkable water, it would be extremely useful in parts of the world often prevalent with fog, like Nepal, Ethiopia, and Rwanda, which happen to be countries that still have limited access to clean water, whether to drink or to sanitize with.

Although the device is mainly used to recover water from fog, Schutzius has stated that the device is also used to utilize steam from cooling towers. Before the steam escapes into the atmosphere, the device is used to quickly capture the water droplets to ensure that it is pollutant-free.

With the endless efforts and actions made to transform damaging pollutants into useful and safe water supply, there is still hope for a slow but steady change that may end the pollutant and water crisis in the future.

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