European Inventors Build Machine Aimed at Reversing Spread of African Desert

A humble beetle has shown two inventors how to make the arid desert bloom.

Stuart Clyens, an English civil engineer, and Russian industrial designer Boris Berlin, devised a machine that harnesses the desert’s daytime sun and nighttime mist to collect water for plants. The growing plants will lower the temperature and attract rain, reversing the desert’s remorseless spread.

Now a Danish bank has given Clyens and Berlin $77,000 to bring their plan to fruition.

If it works, their water collector could help bring plant life back to the desert and slow the rise in temperatures around the world.

“In some desert areas, the only moisture is mist,” Clyens told Reuters in Denmark where he and Berlin have been developing the project. “We’ve tried to use this mist in the same way as a little beetle in the Namibian desert.”

The Namibian Fog-Basking Beetle stands on its head on the cold desert dunes early in the morning. Mist condenses on its back legs and runs down its body into its mouth, Clyens explained.

“The same principle has been used many times before,” he said. “The Bible tells how Gideon collected water this way, by leaving goatskins on the ground overnight to catch the condensing morning mist.”

Similarly, pilots downed in the desert in World War II used their parachutes to gather life-saving water, he said.

“We thought that if nature has found how to do this after millions of years, perhaps we could benefit by copying its technique,” Clyens said.

Known affectionately as the “water beetle,” the water collector Clyens and Berlin have assembled consists of a cylinder on top of three hollow legs, with a brush hanging from the cylinder and a wax ball below the brush.

Mist condenses on the glass fiber brush, which is drawn up into the cylinder by a rod moved by the wax, which expands as the sun grows hotter, a principle often used to open and close greenhouse windows in Europe, Clyens said.

As the wax expands further it closes the black-painted cylinder. The baking sun heats the cylinder and the water evaporates.

The water vapor runs down the hollow steel legs, painted with special acrylic paint to speed its flow, and condenses again on contact with the earth, watering hardy seeds packed in “grow-bags” beneath the water beetle.

So far only a one-fifth scale model has been built, and it has been tested only in laboratory conditions.

But the $77,000 TopDanmark prize--an annual award for promising inventions won by Clyens and Berlin recently--will enable them to build a full-size collector and test it in the Namibian desert.

The machine will stand about 9 feet high, and should collect 1.3 to 2.2 gallons of water a day, Clyens said. “It must be high and strong enough not to get covered by shifting sand or blown over by the wind,” he said.

The two men are still refining the machine, focusing on materials that will be efficient, durable, and will not pollute the desert when the machines eventually stop working.

“We estimate they will cost about ($40) a unit if mass produced, and would need to be spaced about 30 to 40 meters apart,” Clyens said. “It’s a low-technology solution, and we want to be able to just put them in the desert and leave them alone for a decade or so.”

The most expensive part of the project may be transporting big blocks of earth containing specially chosen seeds and burying them in the desert under each water collector.

Denmark’s Ecological Botanical Institute is helping by choosing hardy plants and working out how much water they need while they establish themselves.

The men are hoping that weather stations in Windhoek, the Namibian capital, and in the port of Walvis Bay will provide them with weather data and other information.