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Fog harvesting systems collect and funnel billions of tiny drops of water into a reservoir. They are already being used in parts of the world where rainfall is rare. Researchers at MIT are working with the folks from Pontifical Catholic University and they have found a way to improve those nets by increasing the amount of water they collect by as much as five fold.

Factors that affect how efficient a net would be include spaces between the filaments, and the addition of a chemical coating. They created an efficient design after identifying those things, and one was made of stainless steel filaments, three or four times as thick as human hair, and spaced out twice as far apart.

The new design captures as much as ten percent of the moisture in fog as it passes through the mesh. It's a huge improvement and promises to relieve water demands in many parts of the world. Check out the quick video demo of it: [MIT news]