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To design better water filters, MIT engineers look to manta rays. New research shows the filter-feeders strike a natural balance between permeability and selectivity that could inform design of water treatment systems.
Studying the filter-feeding mechanism of mobula rays, MIT engineers developed a new design for industrial cross-flow water filters.
“We show that the mobula ray has evolved the geometry of these plates to be the perfect size to balance feeding and breathing,” says study author Anette “Peko” Hosoi, the Pappalardo Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. They took images across the channel and observed an interesting transition: At slow pumping rates, the flow was “very peaceful,” and fluid easily slipped through the grooves in the printed plates and out into a reservoir. When the researchers increased the pumping rate, the faster-flowing fluid did not slip through, but appeared to swirl at the mouth of each groove, creating a vortex, similar to a small knot of hair between the tips of a comb’s teeth.
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