Fog Farming

Farming water in dry land seems unworkable, but an established process for doing so already exists: FOG FARMING. Like most forms of farming, fog farming can be seen as a special instance of infrastructure.

FOG FARMING IN THE MOUNTAIN OF CHILE

DEFINITION • FOG FARMING is a study of a hypothetical water farming infrastructure for the arid city like Luanda, Angola; using fog harvesting nets with varying capabilities.

MATERIAL USE IN FOG FARMING • FOG FARMING uses a classic apparatus consists of a nylon or polypropylene mesh, at least a meter or two square, stretched across a metal or plastic frame, with condensed moisture dripping down the mesh into a collection pipe at the bottom of the net.

CONDITIONS IN DOING FOG FARMING • The basic necessary conditions for the deployment of such an apparatus are an arid environment and strong fog. Such fogs are found primarily along particular ocean coasts (the Pacific coasts of Chile and Peru, the Atlantic Coasts of Namibia and Angola, or the Indian coast of the Arabian peninsula) where certain ocean currents produce atmospheric moisture which is then confined and concentrated by mountains.

Fog water collectors on El Tofo mountain, Chile. Water from the fog condenses on these large nets.

• “Fog collectors are inexpensive, passive devices that each produce 200 to 600 liters of fresh water a day by collecting the tiny wind-blown water droplets present in fog. Arrays of collectors produce an average of 5,000 to 15,000 liters of water per day.” (From the gov’t of Canada and FogQuest, a nonprofit initiative for testing and installing arrays) • “These “fogcatchers,” six by twelve metre structures which resemble volleyball nets, work by trapping water from thick, mountain fog, than channeling it into large storage tanks. In high mountain areas communities can be hundreds of thousands of metres above and hours away from rivers, lakes or streams, and even with that difficult access the water they bring back is often contaminated. First tested in

The fog collectors are flat rectangular nets supported by a post at either end and arranged perpendicular to the direction of the prevailing wind.

• A beautifully low-tech solution to freshwater access in areas with negligible rainfall, fogcollection arrays have been successfully installed in Chile, Nepal, southern Africa, and other dry, mountainous regions worldwide.

Fog catchers bring atmosphere’s water to parched regions

The fog catchers are a relatively simple technology that is now being used in parts of the world where there is a lot of fog or cloud, but little rain and no well water. The first large installation was in Chile.

EFFECTS OF FOG FARMING • this process has been explored for several decades as a means to obtain clean water in dry environments, though until now it has been confined to rural locales, owing to problems with airborne particulate pollution. • Fog could be an important source of water for germinating crops in dry regions of some country like Chile, say scientists.

•The technology available to resolve watersupply problems is usually associated with huge capital investments and high operating costs. These costs are justified only where water requirements are relatively great - where the population is sufficiently large or economic activity reaches a certain scale. There is an urgent need to develop technological solutions that can provide enough water to serve rural or suburban communities, which are normally isolated from conventional supply systems. Such solutions should permit more equitable access of people, and the natural resources available to them, to productive activity and economic development.

• As an infrastructure, it has both direct and indirect effects: it is directly responsible for condensing and collecting airborne moisture; but it also has many indirect effects on the growth and health of the urban system. The fundamental inquiry of this project is a unique treatment of infrastructure, considering not just how its programmed function can enable positive development of some urban condition, but how the thing in itself, the system which enables that function, can have other, non-function-related (indirect) effects and how they can be understood and utilized.