Very neat concept. Love to see biomimicry in action. More great stuff available at <a href="https://biomimicry.org/" rel="nofollow">https://biomimicry.org/</a>.<p>And for anyone wondering — <i>these pipes don't leak water,</i> they leak air and other gasses. Title is a tad bit confusing.
Highly misleading title. Content was interesting, but they never said this was "better for moving water". Rather, they said this was better for heat and gas exchange with water...
Is 3d printing a 1mm wide cube really something you need "one of the most advanced" 3d printers for? Can't we get better resolution than that with hobby grade hardware?
What flow rates can this achieve and sustain? If you want to use it for absorption of gasses or heat, presumably you are going to want to move that heat and gas somewhere.<p>Diffusion is quite slow, so I expect you would need flowing water. It might not be all that valuable to have that surface area if you can't also move the water around.<p>I imagine you could have many of these cubes with water flowing past one of their faces. Essentially using Diffusion to move stuff 1mm and using flow once the water is in a real pipe.
Interesting, the principles presented in this video seem microfluidic but it also relies on the surface tension of water so I wonder wonder what realm this belongs under.
What was the main difficulty, here?<p>It's neat, but I'm not seeing the novelty. Is it the mm-scale capillary action, or the fact that it was done with 3D printing?
Is this making use of Bernoulli's principle to avoid busted pipes? Small holes in the pipe when water is running would not leak since σ > p for high speeds and small area. When water is not running, the water leaks out due to increased pressure and avoids potential busted frozen pipes. Although I don't see how this maintains water quality if the pipes are underground.
Basically, a paper towel, sponge, wick, or most any woven fabric.<p>I bet the ‘3D microstructures’ in a typical woven super Shammy are smaller.<p>Slow day at the lab? Publish or perish, I suppose.