Research Hub

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Freshwater scarcity, one of the most pressing challenges the society is facing today, has now emerged as a global threat. Estimates have shown that a large amount of the existing population will not have access to clean drinking water in half a century to come. There is a plethora of industrial events as well as natural consequences across the world where water is emitting as a waste by-product. Atmospheric and industrial fog is an untapped source of potable freshwater. Wind-laden fog in coastal and mountainous areas was attempted to be captured using fog collector sheets in the past. However, there are few studies considered with industrial fog collection. Industries consume a huge amount of water, especially in process cooling; cooling towers (CT) in thermal power plants are one of the biggest examples in this context. Cooling towers are heavily implicated with industrial water losses, as they spew large quantities of water as fog droplets (micro-scale water particles) from the CT cell. Fog harvesting meshes have offered a promising solution to capture a portion of this lost water. A fraction of the drift loss can be recovered by strategically placing optimally engineered meshes near the CT exits, reducing the CT water footprint.