Water transport system inspired by trees | Hacker News Reader

Water transport system inspired by trees

phys.org

58 pointsdnetesn10 comments

Just recently watched a Veritasium video on how trees get water from the roots to the top of the tree, and it's pretty awesome: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BickMFHAZR0

I think the real news here is that the aerogel cleans the water.

But the article is very confusing. For example it says the aerogel turns the water into steam but later it states the sun does this.

The sun heats the carbon nanotube caps, which turn the water into steam. The CNTs absorb light efficiently because they absorb >99.5% of the visible spectrum and transform water into steam efficiently due to their hydrophobicity and high surface area.

I assume the evaporation tubes will be obstructed by impurities very quickly

I wondered about that, but the only statements about purification say that the contaminants are left behind when the water evaporates (as in any other distillation system.)

They have developed a clever mechanism for giving the aerogels an efficient structure for capillary transport, and the nanotubes make an efficient evaporator, but the article does not give any reason why the water needs to be raised before being evaporated (trees do it because they are in a competition for light, and maybe to get away from big herbivores.)

Or: Capillary water transport system inspired by trees

Paper at https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acsnano.9b02331.

Paywalled, so I can’t whether it addresses how the water cleaning effect affects longevity (chances are the stuff it removes from the water will stay in the aerogel, likely eventually blocking water transport)

If this is how we're using words now, I got in an antigravity room (elevator) before boarding a long-range antigravity transport (airplane). The future is now…

the best part is that we have up, and upwards. Fuck "vertical ascent water conveyance" if you NEED big awesome sounding words.

Ok, we've downgraded the title to just a water transport system above.

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