Development and Evolution of the System Structure for Highly Efficient Solar Steam Generation from Zero to Three Dimensions

Human skin shows self‐adaptive temperature regulation through both enhanced heat dissipation in high temperature environments and depressed heat dissipation in cold environments. Inspired by such thermal regulation processes, an interfacial material system with self‐adaptive temperature regulation in the solar‐driven interfacial evaporation system, which can exhibit automatic temperature oscillation to enable pyroelectricity generation while producing water vapor, is reported. The bioinspired interface system is designed with the combination of a thermochromism‐based temperature regulator consisting of tungsten‐doped vanadium dioxide nanoparticles and a polymeric pyroelectric thin film of polyvinylidene fluoride. Under the simulated solar illumination with power density of 1.1 kW m−2, the bioinspired interfacial evaporation system achieves a self‐adaptive temperature oscillation with the maximum temperature difference of ≈7 °C and this system can simultaneously generate water vapor as well as electricity with an evaporation efficiency of 71.43% and a maximum output electrical power density of 104 µW m−2, respectively. The study demonstrates a design of thermal management at the interface of solar‐driven evaporation system to exhibit a self‐adaptive temperature oscillation and offers an alternative approach for the multifunctional harvesting of solar energy.

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“…Such design also separated the bulk water from the water inside the interfacial film to ensure the interfacial evaporation process . 5,36,37…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bioinspired Temperature Regulation in Interfacial Evaporation

Jiang

Shen

Zhang

et al. 2020

Adv Funct Materials

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“…To evaluate the steam generation performance, the solar thermalc onversion efficiency was calculated. [43] According to the calculation, the evaporation efficiencies of the system were 90.3, 91.1, and 92.3 %f or 1, 2, and 3sun illumination, respectively.Details of the calculation can be found in the Supporting Information. In addition, the solar vapor generation performance with different sample amountsw as tested (Figure S9).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…To evaluate the steam generation performance, the solar thermal conversion efficiency was calculated . According to the calculation, the evaporation efficiencies of the system were 90.3, 91.1, and 92.3 % for 1, 2, and 3 sun illumination, respectively.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gel–Emulsion‐Templated Polymeric Aerogels for Water Treatment by Organic Liquid Removal and Solar Vapor Generation

et al. 2020

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The importance of water cannot be overstated. It is the most important natural resource for our survival and development. The development of suitable materials for efficient water purification will provide a critical contribution for sustainable water use. In this context, a gel–emulsion‐templated synthesis of a polymeric aerogel has been developed for water treatment. Owing to its hydrophobic nature, the aerogel shows high sorption (nearly 20 times its weight) for organic liquids, such as toluene, phenol, and nitrobenzene, and can be used to remove them from water. The aerogel shows low thermal conductivity (0.032 W m−1 K−1) and excellent light absorption efficiency (>92 %) after carbonization, which provides the possibility for the construction of an interfacial solar vapor generation system. The as‐prepared materials are used to develop a two‐step approach to remove both organic and inorganic contaminants (salts) from water. Importantly, the aerogel shows excellent reusability and high efficiency both for oil sorption and for solar vapor generation. Moreover, the low cost and easy scale‐up of the preparation process lay a solid foundation for practical application. It is anticipated that the prepared aerogels would contribute not only to water purification but also to other related areas.

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“…Such achievement, to our knowledge, is not merely ascribed to the advances obtained in material science, but also to the radical modifications done on the photothermal structural design, which is also of immense importance. [ 26–28 ]…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Structure Architecting for Salt‐Rejecting Solar Interfacial Desalination to Achieve High‐Performance Evaporation With In Situ Energy Generation

et al. 2020

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requirement has given rise to research thrusts being focused on the development of solar-driven evaporation based desalination technologies. [4][5][6][7] The research on using solar energy in the desalination process has a long history. [3,8,9] In a traditional singleslope basin-like solar still (Figure 1a), saline water is heated and subsequently evaporated by directly exposing to solar radiation. Solar energy is absorbed and converted into thermal energy by a black light-absorbing liner that is situated at the bottom of the solar basin. [10] Due to this design, the solar absorber is immersed in bulk seawater and it hardly receives a fraction of the incoming solar radiation owing to poor light penetration through the thick water layer. Furthermore, the produced heat is easily dissipated into the bulk water, and further lost to the surroundings through water surface radiation, convection and conduction. Due to the above reasons, the resulting solar-tosteam conversion efficiency is inevitably low. Nanoparticle dispersed fluid was then demonstrated to harness solar energy and found to be a great boon to direct water vapor generation. [11,12] A solar conversion efficiency of up to ≈70% can be possibly achieved because heat loss to bulk water is mitigated ( Figure 1b). [13,14] However, research on this advancement didn't last because of the development of solar interfacial heating strategy, which is shown in Figure 1c. The concept of interfacial evaporation was first put forth in 2014 by two reports simultaneously, [15,16] and received a surge of attention and interest immediately in the following years. The most prominent feature of solar interfacial evaporation lies in the position of the solar absorber, which is at the interface between saline liquid and the above air. This special configuration not only minimizes heat loss from the solar absorber to bulk water, but also provides significantly more surface area for prompt vapor release. Also, solar radiation is photothermally localized at the surface of solar absorber, giving rise to high surface temperature, which enables fast heat transfer to water. With it, water transported from reservoir can be heated and evaporated immediately to achieve a higher rate of steam generation. In addition to the differences in heating strategies, it should be noted that all the solar stills follow the same evaporation-condensation route for desalination and clean water collection, and to this end, a similar device structure (e.g., solar still with sloping cover) is usually employed.The past few years have witnessed a rapid development of solar-driven interfacial evaporation, a promising technology for low-cost water desalination. As of today, solar-to-steam conversion efficiencies close to 100% or even beyond the limit are becoming increasingly achievable in virtue of unique photothermal materials and structures. Herein, the cutting-edge approaches are summarized, and their mechanisms for photothermal structure architecting are uncovered in order to achieve ultrahigh conversion e...

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Development and Evolution of the System Structure for Highly Efficient Solar Steam Generation from Zero to Three Dimensions

Cited by 289 publications

References 138 publications

Bioinspired Temperature Regulation in Interfacial Evaporation

Bioinspired Temperature Regulation in Interfacial Evaporation

Gel–Emulsion‐Templated Polymeric Aerogels for Water Treatment by Organic Liquid Removal and Solar Vapor Generation

Structure Architecting for Salt‐Rejecting Solar Interfacial Desalination to Achieve High‐Performance Evaporation With In Situ Energy Generation

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