Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
irst experimenting with various types of mist collection equipment and contrasting
them. Then others, including Carlos Espinosa, German Saa, and Humberto Fuenzalida
in 1959, began to do the same [14]. Notable experiments were also done by Andres Acosta
Baladón [15], during 1960-1964 in the Canary and Cape Verde Islands, and more recently
the Canadian-Chilean joint team of Pilar Cereceda and Robert Schemenauer, which led
to the installation of a permanent station at Chungungo, Chile [16-21]. Among the many
researchers who have cared about harnessing this source of drinking include a night
watchman, Daniel Beysens, who carried out experiments in Croatia and Morocco, Alain
Gioda of France, and Luis Santana Perez with deployments in India of a bold new system
for agriculture based on these methods [22].
In 1998, the author (Recio) began work on a new project in Tenerife focused on the new
design of architectural structures with cutting-edge materials but low-cost equipment [21].
The existing coniguration for large fog collectors (LFCs) was unable to avoid its broad side
from being a mere vertical mesh barrier against strong wind forces, often suffering dam-
age and is incapable of doing much about the vertical precipitation or capture. He was able
to improve the earlier designs because although they were already eficient in low-wind,
arid areas, the same design would not operate in the Canary Islands or anywhere where
strong winds could destroy them, a serious consideration to be reconciled [23-25].
Through a careful analysis of existing LFCs, he proposed, designed, and successfully
constructed a new set of PAFCs based on a system design that worked well on arid, mild
conditions as the starting point, and found a suitable design formula that reduces the neg-
ative impact of the high wind velocities and at the same time avoids phenomena such as
vertical runoff and evaporation effects [26,27]. Early in 2000, Recio set about and developed
the commercially available Aquair Optimizer
®
fog capturing systems through the Natural
Aqua S.L. company, for the sole purpose of continuing the research and development,
and maintenance and upkeep of the DYSDERA (Design and Monitoring Stations Water
Gathering) project. The DYSDERA project was the irst fully scaled and monitored net-
work of PAFCs, and its work was directly focused toward the optimization of a matrix net-
work capture and the storage and distribution of atmospheric water effectively used for all
sorts of activities in rural areas, from independent supply to reforestation and ire ighting.
On the basis of the original idea of using the standard fog collector (SFC), consisting of a
few racks of 1 m
2
dressed with polypropylene mesh prepared by Marzol (Canary Islands),
a jointly developed research program is under way at multiple microclimate points on
Tenerife Island [28,29].
In 2006, the project (DYSDERA) received funding from the European Union (EU) and
had the irst TV station-controlled AWC capable of sending real-time data during the
24 h/365 days of the climate variables, which included optical penetration instrumentation
and precision water low meters being capable of establishing yield as a function of water
content in fog, thus putting an end to inaccurate measurements and shattering previous
capture efforts by obtaining peak yields of 42 L/m
2
/d a y.
The existing fog collectors needed to be upgraded with new shapes, fabrics, and frame-
work types by incorporating the principles of lightness, transformability, portability, and
polyvalence. Some of this progress is typiied by newer and lightweight, polyvalent (hav-
ing different forms) and modular space frames, fully wrapped with a light hydrophobic
mesh that can collect fog and also acts as a shading/coating device and a soil humidiier
for greenery and potential inhabitation. These can be easily installed in either lattened
or uneven ground [30]. Conventional fog harvesting mechanisms today are effectively
a pseudo-replica of two-dimensional surface phenomena in terms of water droplet and
plant interaction. Again resorting to nature itself, it has been found that certain plants
