Enhancement of Interfacial Solar Vapor Generation by Environmental Energy

Li, Xiuqiang; Li, Jinlei; Lu, Jin-You; Xu, Ning; Chen, Chuanlu; Min, Xinzhe; Zhu, Bin; Li, Hongxia; Lin, Zhifang; Zhu, Shining; Zhang, Tiejun; Zhu, Jia

doi:10.1016/j.joule.2018.04.004

Cited by 528 publications

(388 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…Water molecules in PGF (saturated under RH = 100% and water uptake at 5.2 g g −1 ) can be wholly released within 7 min under 1 sun in the open air for a sample of 10 cm in diameter and 1 cm in thickness (red curve in Figure 4b). [35][36][37][38] Then, the average water evaporation rate decreases to be about 0.49 kg m −2 h −1 (from 300 to 420 s), with the surface temperature of PGF increasing at the end of the desorption process. The proposed reason should be that water desorption of PGF consumes most of the input solar energy and induces a low surface temperature.…”

Section: Doi: 101002/adma201905875mentioning

confidence: 99%

Highly Efficient Clean Water Production from Contaminated Air with a Wide Humidity Range

et al. 2019

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contaminated inevitably by the impurities, such as microorganisms, fine particulate matters (PM), and toxic gases like sulfur oxides (SO x ). [11,12] Recently, miscellaneous hygroscopic materials have been explored for moisture capture. For instance, metalorganic frameworks (MOFs) like MOF-801 could harvest 0.25 g g −1 water at a relative humidity (RH) of 20%, and poly(Nisopropyl acrylamide)/sodium alginate (PNIPAAm/Alg) polymer hydrogel demonstrated 0.6 g g −1 water uptake at the RH of 80%, respectively. [13][14][15][16] However, MOF-801 only worked in a narrow RH range (<20% RH) with low water uptake, and the quality of the oozed water from PNI-PAAm/Alg hydrogel was uncertain for the risk of impurities. As a result, it is still a big challenge for harvesting high-quality clean water free of impurities from the air within a full range of humidity.Herein, we demonstrate a highly efficient clean water production system from a contaminated environment with a wide range of humidity based on a rationally designed sodium polyacrylate (PAAS)/graphene framework (PGF). This porous framework with plentiful oxygen functional groups facilitates the sorption of water vapor in humid air and simultaneously grabs the impurities under van der Waals force (Figure 1). Moreover, a high solar-thermal conversion capability of PGF makes water easily desorbed under sun irradiation. [2,17,18] As a result, such a PGF presents the equilibrium water uptake of 0.14 g g −1 at a low RH of 15%, and a superhigh uptake of 5.20 g g −1 at an RH of 100%, exhibiting the excellent water uptake ability in a wide range of humidity. Under solar irradiation of 1 sun (1 kW m −2 ), the sorbed water can be quickly desorbed into vapor within a few minutes to generate clean water free of impurities. Thus, the PGF meets the requirements of efficient moisture capture, impurities filtration, and clean water production from natural air. For practical application, a lab-made prototype of moisture purification and water harvest (MPWH) system is built to collect over 25 L clean water per kilogram of PGF daily from the atmospheric environment. This PGF offers an efficient platform to capture moisture in ordinary and contaminated air for the production of high-quality clean water.The porous PGF is easily prepared through a convenient freeze-drying method (see details in Materials and Methods, Supporting Information). Typically, PAAS is well dispersed in a graphene oxide (GO) dispersion after ultrasonic treatment (Figure 2a). After the freeze-drying (Figure 2b) and reductionThe huge amount of moisture in the air is an unexplored and overlooked water resource in nature, which can be useful to solve the worldwide water shortage. However, direct water condensation from natural or even hazy air is always inefficient and inevitably contaminated by numerous impurities of dust, toxic gas, and microorganisms. In this regard, a drinkable and clean water harvester from complex contaminated air with a wide humidity range based on porous sodium polyacrylate/graphene framework (PGF...

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Section: Doi: 101002/adma201905875mentioning

confidence: 99%

Highly Efficient Clean Water Production from Contaminated Air with a Wide Humidity Range

et al. 2019

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“…Thus, the synthetic tree could effectively convert solar flux to heat and achieve the interfacial evaporation model. For synthetic tree II, the steady‐state surface temperature and evaporation rate were 37°C and 2.03 kg m −2 hours −1 , respectively, because its evaporation area is doubled compared to that of synthetic tree I and ambient heat is harvested 36 . The temperature distribution in the infrared thermal image also confirms that solar‐heat was localized at the evaporation interface, and that the ambient environmental energy enhanced water evaporation (Figure 4C; Figure S5).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 76%

Designing a bioinspired synthetic tree by unidirectional freezing for simultaneous solar steam generation and salt collection

Shao

Tang

et al. 2020

EcoMat

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Solar steam generation with thermal localization was recently proposed for highly efficient solar‐thermal desalination. However, to achieve high steam productivity with long term stability remains a critical challenge due to salt accumulation at the evaporation surface. Here, we designed a T‐shaped synthetic tree that could simultaneously achieve high steam productivity and salt collection with the structure characteristics of interfacial thermal evaporation, ambient energy harvesting and edge‐preferential crystallizing. Under 1 sun, the synthetic tree exhibited a steady water evaporation rate of 2.03 kg m−2 hours−1 over 60 hours, achieving solar thermal efficiency of 75%. Salt was continuously rejected at the edge of the evaporator with a steady collection rate of 59.879 g m−2 hours−1, which did not affect water evaporation. This new design principle to simultaneously harvest water and salt provides a new avenue for solar energy utilization.

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“…[121] The Hg 2+ concentration levels were also reduced from 200 to 1 ppb to reach the EPA standard during water evaporation process, ascribed to the strong adsorption ability of MoS 2 in the solar absorber. For instance, the concentration of heavy metal ions (e.g., Cu 2+ , Cr 3+ , and Pb 2+ ) in the as-collected distillate was 0.066, <0.01 mg L −1 , and <0.01 mg L −1 , respectively, which were much lower than that of effluent discharge content (the stipulated upper concentrations of Cu 2+ , Cr 3+ , and Pb 2+ are 0.2, 0.5, and 0.2 mg L −1 , respectively).…”

Section: Applications Associated With Water Evaporationmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…[125] It has found that 3D artificial umbrella-like evaporator displays a lowest surface temperature (32.7 °C) but highest solar vapor generation efficiency (85%) under one sun than that of two other evaporators (39.5 °C/49% for 2D direct contact evaporator, 43.0 °C/76% for 2D indirect contact evaporator). [121] Copyright 2018, Elsevier. It is because that low working temperature also deteriorates the water evaporation efficiency.…”

Section: Strategies For Enhancing Water Evaporation Efficiencymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Until now, there are only a few examples of solar steam generation device with 100% solar-to-vapor energy transfer efficiency, in spite of the implantation of some advanced strategies such as energy gain from environment to improve thermal management, [121,127] and 3D photothermal structure design to boost utilization of solar energy and minimize heat losses. The previous reports found that most solar steam generator devices exhibited a low water evaporation rate in the range of 1.0-1.5 kg m −2 h −1 under one sun illumination, and just a few cases can reach or exceed 2.0 kg m −2 h −1 .…”

Section: Challengesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

et al. 2019

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Producing affordable freshwater has been considered as a great societal challenge, and most conventional desalination technologies are usually accompanied with large energy consumption and thus struggle with the trade‐off between water and energy, i.e., the water–energy nexus. In recent decades, the fast development of state‐of‐the‐art photothermal materials has injected new vitality into the field of freshwater production, which can effectively harness abundant and clean solar energy via the photothermal effect to fulfill the blue dream of low‐energy water purification/harvesting, so as to reconcile the water–energy nexus. Driven by the opportunities offered by photothermal materials, tremendous effort has been made to exploit diverse photothermal‐assisted water purification/harvesting technologies. At this stage, it is imperative and important to review the recent progress and shed light on the future trend in this multidisciplinary field. Here, a brief introduction of the fundamental mechanism and design principle of photothermal materials is presented, and the emerging photothermal applications such as photothermal‐assisted water evaporation, photothermal‐assisted membrane distillation, photothermal‐assisted crude oil cleanup, photothermal‐enhanced photocatalysis, and photothermal‐assisted water harvesting from air are summarized. Finally, the unsolved challenges and future perspectives in this field are emphasized. It is envisioned that this work will help arouse future research efforts to boost the development of solar‐driven low‐energy water purification/harvesting.

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Enhancement of Interfacial Solar Vapor Generation by Environmental Energy

Cited by 528 publications

References 29 publications

Highly Efficient Clean Water Production from Contaminated Air with a Wide Humidity Range

Highly Efficient Clean Water Production from Contaminated Air with a Wide Humidity Range

Designing a bioinspired synthetic tree by unidirectional freezing for simultaneous solar steam generation and salt collection

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

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