Unlike standard fog harvesting technologies: “We try to use smart geometric designs instead of chemistry,” Boreyko told Ars. “When I came in this area for the first time, almost everyone used nets, but they just tried to make more and more smart chemical coatings to put on the nets to try to reduce the blockage. We thought it just went from a net to a harp, without chemicals or coatings – only the change in geometry resolved much better.”
Jimmy Kainindu inspects a new collection prototype next to the original fog harp.
Credit: Alex Parrish for Virginia Tech
For their scale prototypes in the lab, Boreyko's team 3D has printed their harp “strings” from a weak hydrophobic plastic. “But in general the harp works fantastic with non -coated stainless steel threads and requires absolutely no form of chic coating,” said Boreyko. And the hybrid harp can be scaled up with relatively ease, just like classic nets. It simply means stringing a number of harps of smaller heights, meter per meter, to get the desired size. “There is no limit how big this thing could be,” he said.
The scaling up is the following obvious step, along with testing larger prototypes outdoors. Boreyko also wants to test an electric version of the hybrid fog harp. “If you apply a tension, it appears that you can catch more water,” he said. “Because the non-stuffing of our hybrid, you can have the best of both worlds: use an electric field to stimulate the harvest quantity in real-life systems and at the same time prevent blockage.”
Although the hybrid fog is very suitable for harvesting water in every coastal area that receives a lot of fog, Boreyko also sees other, less obvious potential applications for high -quality fog harvents, such as roads, highways or airport landing strips that are sensitive to fog that can form safety hazards. “There are even industrial manufacturers of chemical supply that create things such as nitrogen gas under pressure,” he said. “The process cools the surrounding air in an ice fog that can float across the street and cause damage to the city blocks.”
Journal of Materials Chemistry A, 2025. DOI: 10.1039/D5TA02686E (About Dois).
