Fog collection can provide water for the most dry cities

Fog water – on a large scale – can provide some of the most dry cities in the world drinking water.

What the Chile researchers have locked after examining the potential to collect fog in the desert city of Alto Hoszio in the northern part of the country.

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

“The city also has many social problems,” said leading researcher Dr. Virginia Carter Gamberini of the Mayor of Universidad. “Poverty, drugs, very poor neighborhoods.”

Without accessing water supply networks, people in the poor neighborhoods rely on drinking water supplied by a truck.

However, the clouds of fog regularly gather over the mountain city are an unused source, the researchers say.

The capture of fog water is remarkably simple – there is a net between the poles and when the clouds loaded with moisture pass through this fine net, droplets are formed. The water is then channeled in pipes and storage tanks.

It has been used on a small scale for several decades, mainly in rural southern and central America – in places with the right misty conditions. One of the largest fog water collection systems is in Morocco, on the edge of the Sahara Desert.

However, Dr. Carter says that the “new era” of a much larger fog collection can provide more secure and sustainable supply of water in an urban environment where it is most needed.

She and her colleagues have evaluated how much water can be produced by collecting fog and combining this information with studies to form a cloud in satellite images and with weather forecasts.

From this they came to the conclusion that the clouds that are regularly formed over the Pacific – and are blown up through the coastal mountain city – can provide people from the poor neighborhoods of Alto Hoszio for a sustainable source of drinking water. They have published their discoveries in Document at the Frontiers of Environmental Science.

The fog of Alto Hoszio is formed over the Pacific – when warm, moist air flows over cold water – and then blows over the mountains. Reliably the misty conditions here allowed D -C Carter and its colleagues to determine areas where the largest volume of water can be collected regularly from the clouds.

Based on the annual average water collection speed of 2.5 liters per square meter a day, researchers have been developed:

• 17,000 sq.m.
• 110 sq.m can respond to the annual search for irrigation of the green spaces of the city
• Fog water can be used for agriculture without soil (hydropones), with yields from 33 to 44 pounds (15 to 20 kg) green vegetables per month

Alto Hospicio is on the edge of the Atacama Desert – one of the most dry places on Earth. With little or no rainfall, the main water source of the cities in the region is underground aquifers – rock layers that contain water -filled spaces – which were last filled thousands of years ago.

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

Dr. Gamberini explained that Chile is “very special” because of her marine fog “because we have an ocean all over the country and have the mountains.”

Currently, her team is working on a “fog collection card” of the whole country.

“The water from the clouds,” as it describes it, Carter may, she said, “improved the resistance of our cities to climate change while improving access to clean water.”