Nouh El Said A, Liu Tianyu, Croft Zacary L, Liu Guoliang
Department of Chemistry, Macromolecules Innovation Institute, and Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia 24061, United States.
Nuclear Materials Authority, P.O. 530, El Maadi, Cairo Egypt.
ACS Mater Lett. 2024 Jan 12;6(2):602-610. doi: 10.1021/acsmaterialslett.3c01593. eCollection 2024 Feb 5.
Nature, through billions of years of evolution, has constructed extremely efficient biosystems for transporting, confining, and vaporizing water. Mankind's ability to master water, however, is far from impeccable, and a sustainable supply of clean fresh water remains a global challenge. Here, we learn from Nature and prepare papyrus carbon (PC) from Egyptian papyrus paper as a sustainable solar desalination material. By taking advantage of the capillary pores from vascular bundles that are inherently built for transporting water in plants, PC achieves an evaporation rate of 4.1 kg m h in a passive single-stage device. Raman spectroscopy and thermal calorimetry show that the capillary pores pose a confinement effect to generate loosely hydrogen-bonded intermediate water, which substantially reduces the enthalpy of vaporization, allowing for exceptionally high energy efficiencies. The understanding is applicable to all nature-designed vascular plants and man-made separation and purification systems.
经过数十亿年的进化，大自然构建了极其高效的生物系统来运输、储存和蒸发水分。然而，人类掌握水的能力远非完美无缺，清洁淡水的可持续供应仍然是一项全球性挑战。在此，我们借鉴大自然的经验，以埃及莎草纸为原料制备了莎草纸碳（PC）作为一种可持续的太阳能海水淡化材料。通过利用植物中原本用于输水的维管束中的毛细孔，PC在被动单级装置中实现了4.1 kg m⁻² h⁻¹ 的蒸发速率。拉曼光谱和热分析表明，毛细孔产生了一种限制效应，生成了氢键松散的中间态水，这大大降低了汽化焓，从而实现了极高的能量效率。这一认识适用于所有自然设计的维管植物以及人造分离和提纯系统。
