School of Energy and Chemical Engineering, Low Dimensional Carbon Materials Center , UNIST , Ulsan 44919 , Republic of Korea.
ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2018 May 9;10(18):15602-15608. doi: 10.1021/acsami.7b19584. Epub 2018 Apr 26.
Solar desalination via thermal evaporation of seawater is one of the most promising technologies for addressing the serious problem of global water scarcity because it does not require additional supporting energy other than infinite solar energy for generating clean water. However, low efficiency and a large amount of heat loss are considered critical limitations of solar desalination technology. The combination of mesoporous three-dimensional graphene networks (3DGNs) with a high solar absorption property and water-transporting wood pieces with a thermal insulation property has exhibited greatly enhanced solar-to-vapor conversion efficiency. 3DGN deposited on a wood piece provides an outstanding value of solar-to-vapor conversion efficiency, about 91.8%, under 1 sun illumination and excellent desalination efficiency of 5 orders salinity decrement. The mass-producible 3DGN enriched with many mesopores efficiently releases the vapors from an enormous area of the surface by heat localization on the top surface of the wood piece. Because the efficient solar desalination device made by 3DGN on the wood piece is highly scalable and inexpensive, it could serve as one of the main sources for the worldwide supply of purified water achieved via earth-abundant materials without an extra supporting energy source.
通过海水热蒸发进行太阳能海水淡化是解决全球水资源短缺严重问题的最有前途的技术之一，因为它在产生清洁水方面不需要额外的支持能源，除了无限的太阳能。然而，低效率和大量的热损失被认为是太阳能海水淡化技术的关键限制。具有高太阳能吸收特性的介孔三维石墨烯网络（3DGN）与具有隔热性能的输水木块的结合，表现出大大提高的太阳能到蒸汽的转化效率。在 1 个太阳照射下，沉积在木块上的 3DGN 提供了卓越的太阳能到蒸汽转化效率值，约为 91.8%，并具有出色的脱盐效率，可降低 5 个数量级的盐度。富含许多介孔的大规模生产的 3DGN 通过在木块顶部表面的热量定位，从巨大的表面积上有效地释放蒸汽。由于由木块上的 3DGN 制成的高效太阳能海水淡化装置具有高度可扩展性和低廉的成本，因此它可以作为通过地球丰富的材料实现全球范围内纯净水资源供应的主要来源之一，而无需额外的支持能源。
