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May 6, 2011

"Nature is a mutable cloud which is always, and never, the same. " --Ralph Waldo Emerson

Harvesting Water, Out of Thin Air

The African Namib beetle has found a distinctive way of surviving. When the morning fog rolls, it collects water droplets on its bumpy back, then lets the moisture roll down into its mouth, allowing it to drink in an area devoid of flowing water. What nature has developed on it's own, Shreerang Chhatre, an MIT graduate student, wants to refine, and help the nearly 900 million people worldwide that live without safe drinking water. But how much water can you possibly get from air? In some field tests, in just a day, fog harvesters have captured one liter of water per square meter of mesh.