Fresh water collection techniques have gained significant attention due to global dwindling of fresh water resources and recent scares such as the 2011-2017 California drought. This project explores the economic viability of actively harvesting water from fog, and techniques to maximize water collection. Vapor compression and thermoelectric cooling based dehumidifier prototypes are tested in a series of experiments to assess water collection capability in foggy environments, and what parameters can increase that capability. This testing shows an approximate maximum collection rate of 1.25 L/kWh for the vapor compression prototype, and 0.32 L/kWh for the thermoelectric cooling prototype; compared to 315 L/kWh for desalination or 12 L/m2/day for passive meshes. Exploration of parameters on the thermoelectric cooling prototype show a potential increase in water collection rate of 29% with the addition of a Teflon coating to the collection surface, 15% by clearing the collection surface, and 89% by tilting certain collection surfaces by 60-75°. In combination, these parameters could push active atmospheric water harvesting into economic viability where significant infrastructure investment is not feasible.

The human body possesses a highly developed range of senses that help orienting oneself in everyday life. Especially when it comes to navigating, perceiving and reacting to the world around us, people tend to rely mostly on their vision and hearing. Suffering from an impairment of either one, or both of the predominating senses means having to counterbalance this constraint. People suffering from blindness and deaf-blindness compensate their impairment mainly by relying on their haptic perception. In this case, information is usually communicated by braille or vibrotactile means. To offer another non-visual and non-audial communication concept this thesis work introduces, the thermal textile pixels. A thermal textile pixel consists of an external thermal device, able to generate hot and cold thermal impulses, and a textile interface to transmit the signal. In order to design such thermal textile pixel it was crucial to be aware of the thermal transfer occurring through and within an textile. Numerous research studies have examined the thermal properties of textiles, especially in the context of clothing comfort, thermal comfort. Nevertheless, it should be considered that as a thermal textile pixel, the textile forms part of a system, governed by many parameters. Therefore, for designing such a device it is important to be aware of the temporal and spatial resolution of the thermal transmitted signal. These characteristics are influenced by multiple textile parameters. For this purpose, a thermal study has been performed investigating in- and out-of-plane signal transmission by textiles in combination with an external thermal device. Using an external thermal device such as a Peltier element allowed to expose the specimens to heating as well as to active cooling. Different knitted structures and material combinations have been examined to gain a first impression on the behaviour of thermal pixels. It was found that thickness and density were the most influential factors for out-of-plane heat transfer. In-plane was found influenced mainly by fibre conductivity. An anisotropic behaviour was noted in-plane, as well as between in- and out-of-plane for heat transfer. Investigating active cooling signals, it was found that a significant decline of performance was noted for all specimens. Plain PA was found to be most suitable for the transmission of heat signals. But did not perform equally well during active cooling phases. Plain Shieldex was observed to perform most steady during heating and active cooling.