Development of combination textile of thin and thick fiber for fog collection bioinspired byBurkheya purpurea

Fog collection is getting to be known as an important technology all over the world. Textiles and fibrous materials have been used and investigated as fog collectors. Plants and animals need to collect water from air in an arid area. We focused on Berkhera purpurea which is one of the African thistles collecting moisture or fog by hairs. This plant captures fog droplets using finer and comparatively hydrophilic hairs supported by thicker and hydorophobic hairs. Mimicking these fibers’ system of thicker fibers and thinner fibers, hydrophobic and comparatively hydrophilic, we made a thinner fiber created by electrospun cellulose acetate on a thicker fiber of Nylon mesh as a supporting material. In the experiment, fine fibers of cellulose acetate are electrospun for 1 min which gave the superior fog capturing property.