A Study to Explore the Dew Condensation Potential of Cars

The metal surfaces of a car exhibit favorable properties for the passive condensation of atmospheric water. Under certain nocturnal climatic conditions (high relative humidity, weak windspeed, and total nebulosity), dew is often observed on cars, and it is appropriate to ask the question of using a vehicle as a standard condenser for estimating the dew yield. In order to see whether cars can be used as reference dew condensers, we report a detailed study of radiative cooling and dew formation on cars in the presence of radiating obstacles and for various windspeeds. Measurements of temperature and condensed dew mass on different car parts (rooftop, front and back hoods, windshield, lateral and back windows, inside and outside air) are compared with the same data obtained on a horizontal, thermally isolated planar film. The paper concludes that heat transfer coefficients, evaluated from temperature and dew yield measurements, are found nearly independent of windspeed and tilt angles. Moreover, this work describes the relation between cooling and dew condensation with the presence or not of thermal isolation. This dependence varies with the surface tilt angle according to the angular dependence of the atmosphere radiation. This work also confirms that cars can be used to estimate the dew yields in a given site. A visual observation scale h = Kn, with h the dew yield (mm) and n = 0, 1 2, 3 an index, which depends whether dew forms or not on rooftop, windshield, and lateral windows, is successfully tested with 8 different cars in 5 sites with three different climates, using K = (0.067 +/- 0.0036) mm.day(-1).

Automated summary

This study investigates the radiative cooling and dew formation on cars, comparing the data obtained on different car parts with that on a thermally isolated planar film. The results show that cars can be used to estimate the dew yields in a given site.