Solar-driven evaporation is an emerging process to acquire freshwater from saline water or wastewater, in which photothermal materials play a crucial role. Significant effort has been devoted to promoting energy...

Nanoporous adsorbents of ZnO/ZnFe2O4/C were synthesized by using a metal organic framework (Fe(III)-modified MOF-5) as both the precursor and the self-sacrificing template. The adsorption properties of ZnO/ZnFe2O4/C toward Pb(ii) ions were investigated, including the pH effect, adsorption equilibrium and adsorption kinetics. The adsorption isotherms and kinetics were well described by using the Langmuir isotherm model and pseudo-second-order model, respectively. The MOF-derived inorganic adsorbents exhibited high absorption performance with a maximum adsorption capacity of 344.83 mg g(-1). X-ray powder diffraction and high-resolution X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy suggest that Zn(ii) was substituted by a significant portion of Pb(ii) on the surface of ZnO nanocrystals. Microscopic observations also demonstrate the effect of Pb(ii) ions on ZnO crystals as reflected by the considerably reduced average particle size and defective outer layer. Quantitative measurement of the released Zn(ii) ions and the adsorbed Pb(ii) ions indicated a nearly linear relationship (R(2) = 0.977). Moreover, Pb-containing ZnO/ZnFe2O4/C adsorbents are strongly magnetic allowing their separation from the water environment by an external magnet.

Conductive polypyrrole-polyaniline/TiO2 nanocomposites (PPy-PANI/TiO2) were prepared by in situ oxidative copolymerization of pyrrole and aniline monomers in the presence of TiO2. For comparison studies, polypyrrole/TiO2 (PPy/TiO2) and polyaniline/TiO2 (PANI/TiO2) were also prepared. The samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, zeta potential analysis, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis and photocurrent tests. In contrast to PPy/TiO2 and PANI/TiO2, PPy-PANI/TiO2 exhibits obvious absorption in the visible-light range, and is much superior to PPy/TiO2 and PANI/TiO2 in thermal stability. It is found that PPy-PANI/TiO2 performs well in the visible-light photocatalytic degradation of 4-nitrophenol. The optimized pyrrole : aniline : TiO2 molar ratio for best performance is 0.75 : 0.25 : 100. The efficacy of PPy-PANI/TiO2 is attributed to its conductivity, conjugated structure, as well as to the synergy amidst polypyrrole, polyaniline and TiO2.

Solar-driven evaporation is promising in oily wastewater treatment, in particular for emulsions, but conventional evaporators suffer from pore blocking by residual oil or contamination by volatile oil compounds in the condensed water.In the current research, we develop a suspended membrane evaporator integrating solar evaporation with oil-in-water emulsion separation. The heating and evaporating interface is separated from the rejecting interface to avoid oil escape and improve heat management. A temperature gradient forms on the membrane surface that can promote evaporation performance by combining both solar and environmental evaporation. Such an evaporator achieves a maximum evaporation rate of 1.645 kg/(m 2 •h) as well as an apparent evaporation efficiency of 111.9%. Moreover, the superhydrophilic and superoleophobic membrane shows excellent oil repellence and emulsion rejection, which can achieve an oil removal efficiency above 98.8% in oil-in-water emulsion separation, and high evaporation rate recovery in cycling tests. A scaled-up membrane evaporator array produces ∼8 kg/(m 2 •d) of clean water from oily wastewater in outdoor experiments, further demonstrating the strong purification performance of this evaporator in oily wastewater treatment.

Ferric tannate is used as a photothermal material and integrated with a polymer membrane by atomic layer deposition for solar water distillation.