Research On Flexible Cross-scale Fog-harvest Device And Its Water Collection & Storage Applications

With the continuous development of human society and the continuous growth of population,the demand for clean fresh water resources is also increasing year by year.In particular,China is facing a serious water shortage problem where per capita water consumption is only 25% of the world average.The reason is that the high rate of agricultural water waste,which accounts for more than half of the country’s total fresh water consumption.In order to solve the problem of water shortage,functional structures or devices inspired by creatures in nature have shown great potential in collecting clean water resources.Although many scientific research achievements have been made in the capture and directional transportation of droplets,for practical daily use,how to effectively store the collected water for direct use and reduce waste has rarely been studied.Inspired by the long-lasting water storage characteristics of Triarrhena sacchariflora leaf sheaths,this research has discovered a new bionic water retention strategy,combined with existing mature microfluidic strategies,designed through femtosecond laser direct writing processing technology and traditional paper art technology.A flexible water fog collection device with anti-evaporation and water retention function,which can achieve efficient collection of fogdrop and long-term storage,and thanks to the flexibility of the device,the combination of multiple devices can be directly worn on the plant stalks.Improve the water collection efficiency and water retention effect of plants,so that it has excellent practical value for direct application in practical applications such as agricultural irrigation and potted plant maintenance.The device is composed of a micro-thorn circular array with high-efficiency fog collection performance and a water storage ring with long-term water retention and antievaporation capabilities.In this study,the performance characterization and principle analysis of the high-efficiency fogdrop collection and the long-term anti-evaporation water retention function realized by the organic combination of its multiple bionic microfluidic strategies.The performance experiment of the crown-like fog collection device shows that compared with a single device,the improvement of water collection and water retention rate was increased of the number of combinations,which proves its excellent scalability and suitable for large-scale use.In summary,this research proposed a novel microfluidic design strategy with multidriving forces acting together,discovered a novel water retention mechanism that relies on structure to achieve anti-evaporation,and builded a new idea to reduce evaporation waste,which is a solution the problem of freshwater resource crisis.