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Interfacial Photothermal Heat Accumulation for Simultaneous Salt Rejection and Freshwater Generation; an Efficient Solar Energy Harvester

Authors :
Zhou Wei
Naila Arshad
Chen Hui
Muhammad Sultan Irshad
Naveed Mushtaq
Shahid Hussain
Matiullah Shah
Syed Zohaib Hassan Naqvi
Muhammad Rizwan
Naeem Shahzad
Hongrong Li
Yuzheng Lu
Xianbao Wang
Source :
Nanomaterials, Vol 12, Iss 18, p 3206 (2022)
Publication Year :
2022
Publisher :
MDPI AG, 2022.

Abstract

Water scarcity has emerged as an intense global threat to humanity and needs prompt attention from the scientific community. Solar-driven interfacial evaporation and seawater desalination are promising strategies to resolve the primitive water shortage issue using renewable resources. However, the fragile solar thermal devices, complex fabricating techniques, and high cost greatly hinder extensive solar energy utilization in remote locations. Herein, we report the facile fabrication of a cost-effective solar-driven interfacial evaporator and seawater desalination system composed of carbon cloth (CC)-wrapped polyurethane foam (CC@PU). The developed solar evaporator had outstanding photo-thermal conversion efficiency (90%) with a high evaporation rate (1.71 kg m−2 h−1). The interfacial layer of black CC induced multiple incident rays on the surface allowing the excellent solar absorption (92%) and intensifying heat localization (67.37 °C) under 1 kW m−2 with spatially defined hydrophilicity to facilitate the easy vapor escape and validate the efficacious evaporation structure using extensive solar energy exploitation for practical application. More importantly, the long-term evaporation experiments with minimum discrepancy under seawater conditions endowed excellent mass change (15.24 kg m−2 in consecutive 8 h under 1 kW m−2 solar irradiations) and promoted its operational sustainability for multi-media rejection and self-dissolving potential (3.5 g NaCl rejected from CC@PU surface in 210 min). Hence, the low-cost and facile fabrication of CC@PU-based interfacial evaporation structure showcases the potential for enhanced solar-driven interfacial heat accumulation for freshwater production with simultaneous salt rejection.

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
20794991
Volume :
12
Issue :
18
Database :
Directory of Open Access Journals
Journal :
Nanomaterials
Publication Type :
Academic Journal
Accession number :
edsdoj.734a6f21753a4909aefe2dce062b9a7a
Document Type :
article
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.3390/nano12183206