How Different Are Fog Collection and Dew Water Harvesting on Surfaces with Different Wetting Behaviors?

As the clean water shortage becomes a serious problem for mankind, atmospheric water harvesting has emerged as a viable solution. Two main approaches to collect water from the atmosphere exist: the first is to capture it from fog, whereas the second is through condensation of vapor on surfaces with a temperature below the dew point. The water collection mechanism in these two modes is completely different. In this work, we develop a deeper understanding of the effect of surface wettability on gravity-assisted atmospheric water harvesting and a comparative study of the two collection modes (fog and dew). First, we present theoretical estimates for the maximum water mass available in each mode and introduce an efficiency factor η which enables the direct comparison among surfaces in different setups and modes. Then we fabricate a series of micronanostructured surfaces with different surface wetting properties from hydrophilic to superhydrophobic. Our results demonstrate that drop mobility, derived from the surface superhydrophobic properties and micronanotopography, is the most important factor affecting fog collection: superhydrophobic surfaces show 40–65% higher fog collection rates compared to flat hydrophilic surfaces, with the more mobile among superhydrophobic surfaces (hysteresis 2°, and air–liquid fraction fA-L > 0.9) showing higher water collection. On the other hand, dew harvesting efficiency depends on the combination of drop mobility and nucleation rate, with superhydrophobic surfaces exhibiting 40% higher water collection rate compared to the flat hydrophilic or hydrophobic surfaces due to their low hysteresis as well as high surface area available for nucleation.