Getting the Water Out of the Fog
Fog is a marvelous thing. If you’ve ever had a chance to observe a layer of fog approaching from a distance, let’s say when standing on a mountainside gazing into a fog-filled valley below, you know there is a lot of water in those clouds. Many types of vegetation thrive on the water that the fog provides. But until now the water in the fog was not accessible to people, at least not easily.
The new technology for “milking” water from fog is being developed in an arid place on the edge of the desert in northern Chile, the coastal city of Iquique. In this place the fog is extremely dense, “perfect for milking” as one scientist put it. What this scientist means by milking is removing the water from the fog for the purpose of scientific inquiry, but there is an additional motivation, to collect much needed drinking water.
The hope is that desert fog can be an important source for drinking water in otherwise water-poor areas. Water is milked from fog using nets, which proves to be a low cost method of collecting water, a very important aspect for what are generally impoverished regions of the world.