A low-cost, high-efficiency, new generation material for fog harvesting fumed silica-doped polypropylene

This study describes the development of a fog collector material for fog harvesting. Polypropylene (PP) doped with fumed silica (0-2%) was punctured at equal intervals and exposed to fog produced by a humidifier. The amount of water harvested by each sample was measured using an ultrasonic fogger. Polypropylene doped with 1% fumed silica was most effective at harvesting water, and collected almost 19-20 times more water than pure polypropylene. This improvement is due to the surface tension, which decreased from 16.754 mN/m (pure PP) to 13.512 and 9.992 mN/m (0.5% and 1% fumed silica, respectively). On the other hand, when fumed silica doping exceeded 1%, this increased the polymer's surface tension, measured as 20.6 and 38.1 mN/m for 1.5 and 2% fumed silica doping. We therefore propose fog harvesting using 1% fumed silica-doped polypropylene as a low-cost method for collecting clean water in arid regions.