Toward sustainable landscape irrigation using a novel design for water collection systems that use atmospheric moisture condensation

Abstract

This paper introduces a novel design that uses high-emissivity materials with no hydrophobic surfaces to increase the speed of condensation and the dropping-off process in water collection systems from atmospheric moisture. The design incorporates simple and low-cost technology that takes advantage of advanced material properties to enable sustainable irrigation in regions characterized by water resource scarcity, generally favoring greening. The concept is based on the application of universal physics principles such as dew point, wetting and antiwetting, and material emissivity coefficients. The innovative collection system design and experimentation confirm the feasibility of collecting water from the air in various semi-arid regions with a low number of rainy days. The first novel aspect of the collection system design is the rapid increase in condensation and the use of materials with a high capacity to release collected water to address unwanted evaporation. The second novel feature is that the volume is reduced, and the system is flexible and inexpensive, allowing it to be distributed across a specific landscape. Reduced construction costs and ease of use demonstrate the real possibility of its use in developing and poor countries to first increase vegetation diffusion and then contribute to sustainable agriculture and green architecture.