Fog harvesting could provide water for the driest cities

Fog water captured – on a large scale – can provide some of the world’s dry cities with drinking water.

This is what the researchers concluded in Chile after studying the capabilities of fog harvest in the city of Al -Sahara Hospital in the north of the country.

The average rainfall in the area is less than 0.19 in (5 mm) per year.

“The city suffers from many social problems,” said the main researcher, Dr. Virginia Carter Gambini, of the mayor of Universide. “Poverty, drugs, many poor neighborhoods.”

With no access to water supply networks, people in the slums depend on drinking water that is delivered by the truck.

However, the fog clouds that gathered regularly over Mountain are an unspecified source, the researchers say.

Fog water capture is significantly simple – a network is suspended between the columns, and when the clouds full of moisture pass through this beautiful network, the shape of the drops. Then the water is directed to storage tubes and tanks.

It was used on a small scale for several decades, especially in rural areas in southern and central America – in places with the right foggy conditions. One of the largest fog water harvesting systems In Morocco, on the edge of the Sahara Desert.

However, Dr. Carter says that a “new era” of widespread fog can provide safer supplies and water in urban environments where needed.

She and her colleagues conducted an assessment of the amount of water that can be produced by harvesting fog, and gathered that information with cloud formation studies in satellite images and weather forecasts.

From this, they concluded that clouds that are formed regularly on the Pacific Ocean – and are detonated throughout the coastal mountain city – can provide the people of the slums in Alto in the sustainable source hospital for drinking water. Publish their results in Paper in the Journal of Environmental Sciences.

Alto Hospicio fog formed over the Pacific Ocean – when warm air flows on cold water – then it is detonated over the mountains. The reliable foggy conditions here allowed Dr. Carter and its colleagues to determine the areas where the largest amount of water can be harvested regularly.

Based on the average annual water collection rate of 2.5 liters per square meter of networks per day, the researchers worked:

• It can produce 17,000 square meters of networks enough water to meet the weekly demand for water of 300,000 liters, which is currently being delivered by truck to urban poor neighborhoods
• 110 square meters can meet the annual demand for irrigation in the green spaces in the city
• Fog water can be used for soil -free agriculture, with revenues from 33 to 44 pounds (15 to 20 kg) of green vegetables in one month

Alto Hospicio on the edge of the Atacama desert – one of the most dry places on Earth’s face. With a little precipitation or non -precipitation of rain, the main water source of cities in the region is underground groundwater – rock layers containing water filled with water – it was last re -packed thousands of years ago.

With the growth of the urban population, the demand for these water supplies from mining and industry, scientists say there is an urgent need for other sustainable sources of clean water.

Dr. Gambini explained that Chile is “very special” for its naval fog “, because we have the ocean along the entire country and we have mountains.

Her team is currently working on the “fog harvest map” for the entire country.

She said, “Water from clouds,” as Dr. Carter describes it, can “enhance the elasticity of our cities for climate change, while improving access to clean water.”