Harvest2O: Leveraging Biomimicry to Battle the Global Water Crisis
When NASA is looking for evidence of life outside our planet, their first step is to look for evidence of water. Indisputably, water is essential to life. However, with climate change causing droughts, flooding, and water pollution, many rural regions are under severe water stress and have become increasingly vulnerable to contamination and disease. The world could see an extreme water shortage as early as 2030. What’s more- as global temperatures rise, more water is absorbed into the atmosphere, raising humidity levels and further increasing global temperatures.
To mitigate these issues, we decided to target a largely untapped water source: fog. Introducing Harvest2O, a solution that we believe could alleviate the rising pressure of the global water crisis in both a cost-effective and energy-efficient manner.
Harvest2O is inspired by the structure of the Namib beetle and how the cross spider’s web leverages electrostatic attraction to capture its prey.
Our final model is essentially a collector mesh that utilizes electrostatic attraction to capture water droplets. After drawing inspiration from biological models, we decided to use a collector mesh to reach a similar level of efficiency that Namib beetles reach in collecting water drops and electrical ionization to mimic how a cross spider’s orb-web uses electrostatic attraction to capture its prey.
With our solution, a fog blown wind or water vapour stream would be electrically ionized by a carbon fibre electrical emitter. This vapour would then be attracted to a collector mesh and after condensing and coalescing to form water droplets, would roll down and collect in a reservoir. Through experimentation and many iterations of our model, we were eventually able to achieve a water recovery system that has 89.4% efficiency, uses low energy compared to current solutions, and is environmentally sustainable.
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