A flexible photothermal cotton-CuS nanocage-agarose aerogel towards portable solar steam generation

A 3D‐Structured Sustainable Solar‐Driven Steam Generator Using Super‐Black Nylon Flocking Materials

“…The best result of evaporation rate is 2.09 kg m −2 h −1 when six BNF flocking boards were vertically inserted into a flat BNF flocking board (Figure c,d). The obtained evaporation rate of 2.09 kg m −2 h −1 is about 1.9 times of the flat BNF flocking board evaporator, and well beyond its corresponding theoretical limit of 1.50 kg m −2 h −1 (assuming 100% solar energy was being used for evaporation latent heat), of course better than most previous report records under 1 sun illumination (Figure e), even faster than those reported by other systems under 2 sun illumination (1.93 kg m −2 h −1 reported by Ghasemi et al). The significant promotion in evaporation can be explained by the following mechanisms: 1) Reduction in heat loss.…”

“…For seawater desalination, the solar‐driven steam generator is one of the most potential applications. To date, however, the majority of previous solar‐driven evaporation technologies were demonstrated using deionized water and thus the salt accumulations issue in seawater desalination was not considered . There are major unaddressed issues in seawater desalination including salt accumulations, long‐term evaporation stability, and durability, which highly influence its application prospects .…”

“…Unlike the conventional solar‐driven steam generators, which involve heating the bulk water and suffer from inferior energy conversion efficiency, the novel solar‐driven steam generator by the surface localized‐heating behavior commonly has a high solar absorbing surface and can float on the water surface . So far, a variety of newly emerging nanomaterials have been widely explored in solar‐driven evaporation applications due to their effective solar absorbance and high solar steam generation efficiency, such as gold nanoparticles, aluminum nanoparticles, carbon nanotube, graphene and their derivatives, etc . Under 1 sun illumination (1 kW m −2 ), a high evaporation rate of 1.63 kg m −2 h −1 has been reached by an evaporator consists of cotton‐CuS nanocage‐agarose aerogel .…”

“…So far, a variety of newly emerging nanomaterials have been widely explored in solar‐driven evaporation applications due to their effective solar absorbance and high solar steam generation efficiency, such as gold nanoparticles, aluminum nanoparticles, carbon nanotube, graphene and their derivatives, etc . Under 1 sun illumination (1 kW m −2 ), a high evaporation rate of 1.63 kg m −2 h −1 has been reached by an evaporator consists of cotton‐CuS nanocage‐agarose aerogel . However, as is well known, there are still tremendous challenges of nanomaterials that need to be addressed including material cost, severe preparation process as well as scale‐up production.…”

Harnessing Solar‐Driven Photothermal Effect toward the Water–Energy Nexus

“…[45] First, when the energy of incident light is higher than or equal to the bandgap of semiconductor, the electron-hole pairs will be motivated and generated within semiconductor. [47] In addition, a series of new narrow-bandgap semiconductors have been developed as the promising alternative to realize full-spectrum solar-to-heat, including CuS, [48,49] Ti 2 O 3 , [45] TiN, [50] TiAlN, [51] CuFeSe 2 , [52] and Te. However, most wide-bandgap semiconductors exhibit relatively narrow absorption wavelength.…”