Faculty of Biotechnology, Chemistry and Environmental Engineering, Phenikaa University, Hanoi 10000, Viet Nam.
Sci Total Environ. 2021 Mar 10;759:143490. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.143490. Epub 2020 Nov 11.
It is a challenge to harvest both electricity and freshwater from the oceans. This communication demonstrates that the natural-inspired hierarchical evaporator based on multi-walled carbon nanotubes can generate electricity via water evaporation for freshwater production. Furthermore, for the first time, the effect of the nature of exposed electrodes in an electrolyte solution and the distance between two electrodes on the generation of electricity is carefully investigated. We found that the natural-inspired hierarchical evaporator could generate electricity for all time of the day. The proposed natural-inspired hierarchical evaporator is scalable, feasible, and low-cost, providing great potential for direct industrial applications of solar energy on clean water and electricity generations for all time of the day. Moreover, this work also provides additional evidence unravel how electricity is generated by water flow on the surface of carbon materials.
从海洋中同时获取电能和淡水是一项挑战。本研究展示了一种基于多壁碳纳米管的受自然启发的分层蒸发器，它可以通过水蒸发来产生电能，从而实现淡水的生产。此外，本文首次仔细研究了电解质溶液中暴露电极的性质以及两个电极之间的距离对发电效果的影响。研究发现，受自然启发的分层蒸发器可以在一天中的任何时候发电。所提出的受自然启发的分层蒸发器具有可扩展性、可行性和低成本，为太阳能在清洁水和全天候发电方面的直接工业应用提供了巨大的潜力。此外，这项工作还提供了额外的证据，揭示了水流在碳材料表面产生电能的方式。
