There’s a natural example of a surface engineered to facilitate the extraction of water from the atmosphere. It’s a beetle (Physosterna cribripes) that lives in the Namib Desert in Africa. It exposes hydrophilic (waterloving) bumps on its back to the prevailing winds at dawn, when the fog comes in. These structures capture free-form fog droplets in the air. The rest of its back is hydrophobic, so the droplets roll off easily and reach the beetle’s mouth. This way it can survive in an environment that has no ground water.
Around the world there’s been interest in replicating this idea. I’ve been working on freshwater capture for about 11 years now. The idea is to use
