China State Key Laboratory of Biogeology and Environmental Geology, Engineering Research Center of Nano-Geomaterials of Ministry of Education, Faculty of Materials Science and Chemistry, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, China.
Key Laboratory of Catalysis and Energy Materials Chemistry of Education, Hubei Key Laboratory of Catalysis and Materials Science, South-Central University for Nationalities, Wuhan 430074, China.
Water Res. 2021 Nov 1;206:117759. doi: 10.1016/j.watres.2021.117759. Epub 2021 Oct 14.
Freshwater shortage has been a terrible threat for the sustainable progress and development of human society in 21st century. Inspired from natural creatures, harvesting water from atmosphere has been a feasible and effective method to alleviate water shortage crisis. However, the recent works related to water collection just focuses on how to optimize fog-harvesting manners and efficiencies, the safety and availability of collected water are always ignored. In this paper, we proposed a new strategy accessed to freshwater resources through combining water collection and purification together on eco-friendly superwettable material inspired by cactus spines and desert beetles. Six superhydrophilic wedge-shaped patterns prepared by P25 TiO nanoparticles (NPs) were constructed on candle soot@polydimethylsiloxane (CS@PDMS) superhydrophobic coating. The special superhydrophilic regions not only effectively captured water from foggy environment but generated Laplace pressure gradient to faster drive water away. The bioinspired material exhibited an efficient water collection rate (WCR) of 14.9 ± 0.2 mg min cm, which was 5.3 and 2.5 times larger than that on uniformed superhydrophilic and superhydrophobic surfaces, respectively. Because of the existence of photocatalytic P25 NPs in wetting areas, the harvested wastewater containing nine kinds of pesticides (0.5 mg/L) could be purified in low concentrations (< 5%) under UV light (365 nm, 5.0 ± 0.6 mW cm). Ten zebrafishes were still alive in such purified water for 72 h, as a contrast, the same number of fishes would almost die in untreated harvested wastewater in just 7 h. This work indeed opens up a new sight to freshwater accessibility, aiming to a promising project for alleviating water shortage around the world.
淡水短缺是 21 世纪人类社会可持续发展和进步的可怕威胁。受自然生物的启发，从大气中采集水已成为缓解水资源短缺危机的一种可行且有效的方法。然而，最近与集水相关的工作主要集中在如何优化集水方式和效率上，而忽略了收集水的安全性和可用性。在本文中，我们提出了一种新的策略，即通过结合水的收集和净化，从受仙人掌刺和沙漠甲虫启发的环保超亲水性材料中获取淡水资源。通过在 candle soot@polydimethylsiloxane (CS@PDMS) 超疏水涂层上制备的 P25 TiO 纳米颗粒 (NPs) ，构建了六个超亲水楔形图案。特殊的超亲水区域不仅可以有效地从雾环境中捕获水，而且还会产生 Laplace 压力梯度，从而更快地将水驱离。这种仿生材料表现出高效的集水率 (WCR) 为 14.9 ± 0.2 mg min cm ，分别是均匀超亲水和超疏水表面的 5.3 和 2.5 倍。由于湿区存在光催化 P25 NPs，含有 9 种农药（0.5 mg/L）的收集废水在低浓度（<5%）下可在 UV 光（365nm，5.0 ± 0.6 mW cm ）下得到净化。在这种净化水中，10 条斑马鱼仍能存活 72 小时，相比之下，在未经处理的收集废水中，同样数量的鱼在短短 7 小时内几乎全部死亡。这项工作确实为获取淡水开辟了新的途径，为缓解全球水资源短缺问题提供了一个有前景的方案。
