Passive dew collection in a grassland area, The Netherlands

Passive dew collection experiments were initiated in late 2003 in the centre of The Netherlands within a grassland area. A specially designed 1 m2 insulated planar dew collector, set at a 30° angle from horizontal, was covered with a thin (0.39 mm) polyethylene foil and subsequently replaced with 4 mm polyvinyl chloride. A second dew collector, in the shape of an inverted pyramid, was constructed to reduce the view angle to only the nighttime sky. A simple surface energy-budget model and an aerodynamic model were used to simulate the dew collected by both collectors. The planar collector collected about 90% of the dew at the grass cover while the pyramid collector collected about 1.20% of the grass cover. The aerodynamic model was able to predict the amount of collector data to within 50% for the planar collector and 60% for the inverted pyramid collector. The pyramid collector design was able to collect about 20% more dew than the inclined planar collector.