Wei Zhou, Arshad Naila, Hui Chen, Irshad Muhammad Sultan, Mushtaq Naveed, Hussain Shahid, Shah Matiullah, Naqvi Syed Zohaib Hassan, Rizwan Muhammad, Shahzad Naeem, Li Hongrong, Lu Yuzheng, Wang Xianbao
Hubei Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials, Collaborative Innovation Center for Advanced Organic Chemical Materials Co-Constructed by the Province and Ministry, Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for the Green Preparation and Application of Functional Materials, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Hubei University, Wuhan 430062, China.
Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Micro/Nano Optomechatronics Engineering, College of Mechatronics and Control Engineering, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518060, China.
Nanomaterials (Basel). 2022 Sep 15;12(18):3206. doi: 10.3390/nano12183206.
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 h). 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 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 in consecutive 8 h under 1 kW m 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.
水资源短缺已成为对人类的严重全球威胁，需要科学界迅速关注。太阳能驱动的界面蒸发和海水淡化是利用可再生资源解决原始水资源短缺问题的有前景的策略。然而，脆弱的太阳能热装置、复杂的制造技术和高成本极大地阻碍了偏远地区太阳能的广泛利用。在此，我们报告了一种由碳布（CC）包裹的聚氨酯泡沫（CC@PU）组成的具有成本效益的太阳能驱动界面蒸发器和海水淡化系统的简易制造方法。所开发的太阳能蒸发器具有出色的光热转换效率（90%）和高蒸发速率（1.71 kg m² h⁻¹）。黑色CC的界面层在表面诱导了多条入射光线，使其具有出色的太阳能吸收能力（92%），并在1 kW m⁻²的光照下强化了热局域化（67.37 °C），同时具有空间定义的亲水性，便于蒸汽逸出，并通过广泛利用太阳能进行实际应用来验证有效的蒸发结构。更重要的是，在海水条件下进行的长期蒸发实验差异极小，具有出色的质量变化（在1 kW m⁻²的太阳辐射下连续8小时内为15.24 kg m⁻²），并提高了其对多种介质的截留能力和自溶解潜力（210分钟内从CC@PU表面截留3.5 g NaCl）下的运行可持续性。因此，基于CC@PU的界面蒸发结构的低成本和简易制造展示了增强太阳能驱动界面热积累以同时进行淡水生产和脱盐的潜力。
