All-Weather Freshwater and Electricity Simultaneous Generation by Coupled Solar Energy and Convection

Abstract

Integrating solar evaporation-driven desalination and electricity production has emerged as a promising approach to alleviate energy crisis and freshwater scarcity. However, there remain huge challenges to achieve high water productivity and steady power generation efficiency. Herein, a compact evaporation-induced water–electricity co-generation device was proposed using a bio-waste squid ink sphere-based cellulose fabric as an evaporator and a silicon nanowires array-based evaporation-driven moist-electric generator. The efficient localized solar thermal heating of the photothermal component leads to significant enhancement in freshwater yield, and the latent heat of vapor condensation is recycled to promote the electricity generation. More notably, the device is capable of harvesting wind energy toward all-weather water and power generation. The fabricated device demonstrated a high evaporation rate of 2.17 kg m–2 h–1 with a collection rate of 66.7% and a maximum output voltage of 1.48 V under one sun illumination with a wind speed of 4 m s–1. The outdoor experiments display a maximum water evaporation rate of 1.84 kg m–2 h–1 with a maximum output voltage of 1.35 V even on cloudy days. Such superior performance of a comprehensive device has great potential for sustainable and practical application in freshwater and electricity generation.

Highly efficient solar driven cogeneration of freshwater and electricity

“…When the 2D membrane was inserted into the water interface at an angle of 45°, a high-water evaporation rate of 1.93 kg m −2 h −1 was achieved, and a weak short-circuit current of up to 5 μA was generated in the simulated seawater with an optimized output power of 0.60 μW. Yu et al 28 constructed an evaporation induced water-electricity co-generation device using waste cuttlefish ink spheres as photothermal materials and a silicon nanowire array evaporation driven hydroelectric generator as a photovoltaic module, achieving an evaporation rate of 2.17 kg m −2 h −1 and a maximum output voltage of 1.48 V. Although there have been several attempts to combine water evaporation and hydroelectric power generation, many bottlenecks remain. First, it is a challenge to simultaneously achieve high evaporation rates and excellent electricity generation performance, since water evaporation and HVE are not well integrated.…”

Self-powered PtNi-polyaniline films for converting rain energy into electricity

“…Unfortunately, the total power output of as-developed devices is limited by the weather. 18 The popular solar power provides relatively low or even zero electricity under dark-or free-light conditions. [19][20][21] In addition, the issue is even more challenging in rain-rich countries or regions, such as in Southeast Asia and South America, which are subjected to rain for more than 30 percent of the year.…”

Absorption characteristics and solar absorption capacity of Au core NR coated with various shell material

“…Among them, solar thermal conversion [3][4][5] is the most popular and straightforward strategy compared to solar electric and solar chemical conversion. So far, solar-to-thermal conversion has gained broad applications in wastewater separation/ purification [6], electricity generation [7,8], solar power generation [9], seawater desalination [10], solar thermoelectric generator [11] and concentrated solar power system [12].…”