Harvesting Namib Desert Fog with High Voltage

As fun as mucking about with simulated environments in a laboratory is, at some point you have to do those field tests to demonstrate that your prototype actually works in …. Harvesting Namib Desert Fog with High Voltage. This is what the [Plasma Channel] recently did for their fog harvesting system by setting it up in the Namib desert.

We previously covered the atmospheric water harvesting attempts, using electrostatic precipitation to draw the moisture in the air onto the collectors where it can then be harvested. This is rather different from existing approaches with e.g. Fine meshes and hoping that enough water molecules bump into your mesh, so theoretically it should be much more efficient.

In the lab it worked well, but reality always has the last word. The Namib desert is at the top of the world’s most arid regions, competing with the Atacama desert. What it does have going for it is regular fog rolling in that lasts until sunrise, providing a good target for water harvesting.