Department of Materials Science and Nano Engineering, Rice University , Houston, Texas 77005, United States.
Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University , Beijing 100084, China.
ACS Nano. 2018 Jan 23;12(1):829-835. doi: 10.1021/acsnano.7b08196. Epub 2018 Jan 8.
Harvesting solar energy for desalination and sewage treatment has been considered as a promising solution to produce clean water. However, state-of-the-art technologies often require optical concentrators and complicated systems with multiple components, leading to poor efficiency and high cost. Here, we demonstrate an extremely simple and standalone solar energy converter consisting of only an as-prepared 3D cross-linked honeycomb graphene foam material without any other supporting components. This simple all-in-one material can act as an ideal solar thermal converter capable of capturing and converting sunlight into heat, which in turn can distill water from various water sources into steam and produce purified water under ambient conditions and low solar flux with very high efficiency. High specific water production rate of 2.6 kg h m g was achieved with near ∼87% under 1 sun intensity and >80% efficiency even under ambient sunlight (<1 sun). This scalable sheet-like material was used to obtain pure drinkable water from both seawater and sewage water under ambient conditions. Our results demonstrate a competent monolithic material platform providing a paradigm change in water purification by using a simple, point of use, reusable, and low-cost solar thermal water purification system for a variety of environmental conditions.
将太阳能用于海水淡化和污水处理已被认为是生产清洁水的一种很有前途的解决方案。然而，最先进的技术通常需要光学集中器和具有多个组件的复杂系统，导致效率低下和成本高。在这里，我们展示了一种极其简单的独立太阳能转换器，它仅由预先制备的 3D 交联蜂窝状石墨烯泡沫材料组成，而没有任何其他支撑组件。这种简单的一体化材料可以作为一种理想的太阳能热转换器，能够捕获和将阳光转化为热能，进而可以将各种水源中的水蒸馏成蒸汽，并在环境条件和低太阳辐照度下以非常高的效率产生净化水。在 1 个太阳强度下，实现了 2.6 kg h m g 的高比产水率，接近 87%，即使在环境阳光（<1 个太阳）下，效率也超过 80%。这种可扩展的片状材料被用于在环境条件下从海水和污水中获得纯净的可饮用水。我们的结果表明，提供了一种有能力的整体材料平台，通过使用简单、就地使用、可重复使用且低成本的太阳能热净化系统，为各种环境条件下的水净化带来了范式转变。
