Mushrooms as Efficient Solar Steam‐Generation Devices

Xu, Ning; Hu, Xiaozhen; Xu, Weichao; Li, Xiuqiang; Lin, Zhifang; Zhu, Shining; Zhu, Jing

doi:10.1002/adma.201606762

Cited by 972 publications

(698 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…[93] As a consequence, the effective and common solution is to reduce the contact area to minimize the conductive and radiative heat from the evaporation surface. Until now, a series of low thermal conductivity materials have been exploited as the insulating supporter, including polyethylene membrane (0.448 W m −1 K −1 ), [48] cotton (0.04 W m −1 K −1 ), [66] wood (0.11-0.36 W m −1 K −1 ), [64,122] polystyrene foam (≈0.04 W m −1 K −1 ), [65] and plant fiber sponges (0.103 W m −1 K −1 ), [123] and electrospun polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) layers ( Figure 5a). In this special structure, the bottom carbon foam is thermally insulating to reduce heat losses to the underlying bulk water, and the top exfoliated graphite layer acts as the solar absorber.…”

Section: Strategies For Enhancing Water Evaporation Efficiencymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…[65] In order to further study the influence of evaporation surface, three kinds of evaporators, such as 2D direct contact evaporator, 2D indirect contact evaporator and 3D artificial umbrella-like evaporator, were developed to systematically compare the correlation between the surface temperature (i.e., evaporation surface) and water evaporation rate. It is noteworthy that the sum of the two kinds of heat losses (1480 W m −2 ) has exceeded the incident solar flux (1000 W m −2 ).…”

Section: Strategies For Enhancing Water Evaporation Efficiencymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…[65] Similarly, a cotton rod was designed as the stem of umbrella-like solar evaporator to act as 1D water supply channel. The typical example of 1D water pathway is natural mushroom stipe, and its hydrophilic fibrous stipe can pump up water into the mushroom by capillary force and confine the water path in a quasi-1.…”

Section: Strategies For Enhancing Water Evaporation Efficiencymentioning

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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Section: Strategies For Enhancing Water Evaporation Efficiencymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Strategies For Enhancing Water Evaporation Efficiencymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Strategies For Enhancing Water Evaporation Efficiencymentioning

confidence: 99%

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

et al. 2019

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“…Natural and carbonized mushrooms achieved around 62% and 78% conversion efficiencies under 1 kW m −2 solar irradiance, respectively (Figure 13a-d). It is found that this capability of high solar steam generation is attributed to the unique natural structure of mushroom, umbrella-shaped black pileus, porous context, and fibrous stipe with a small cross section [110]. Inspired by the water transpiration behavior in trees through xylem from roots to the leaves surface, carbon nanotube coated balsa wood [111], flame coated wood [112], and graphene oxide coated wood [113], demonstrated an efficiency of 81, 72, and 83% at solar irradiance of 10, 1, and 12 kW m −2 , respectively.…”

Section: Bio-composites Based Floating Solar Receiversmentioning

confidence: 99%

Novel Receiver-Enhanced Solar Vapor Generation: Review and Perspectives

Raza

Alzaim

et al. 2018

Energies

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Efficient solar vapor/steam generation is important for various applications ranging from power generation, cooling, desalination systems to compact and portable devices like drinking water purification and sterilization units. However, conventional solar steam generation techniques usually rely on costly and cumbersome optical concentration systems and have relatively low efficiency due to bulk heating of the entire liquid volume. Recently, by incorporating novel light harvesting receivers, a new class of solar steam generation systems has emerged with high vapor generation efficiency. They are categorized in two research streams: volumetric and floating solar receivers. In this paper, we review the basic principles of these solar receivers, the mechanism involving from light absorption to the vapor generation, and the associated challenges. We also highlight the two routes to produce high temperature steam using optical and thermal concentration. Finally, we propose a scalable approach to efficiently harvest solar energy using a semi-spectrally selective absorber with near-perfect visible light absorption and low thermal emittance. Our proposed approach represents a new development in thermally concentrated solar distillation systems, which is also cost-effective and easy to fabricate for rapid industrial deployment.

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“…[29][30][31][32][33] Consequently, the highly promising photothermal effect was not duly exploited to unleash a maximum impact on the electrocatalytic performance. This will inevitably cause considerable heat losses to bulk electrolyte by rapid thermal diffusion, hence leading to poor photothermal utilization.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

A Hybrid Solar Absorber–Electrocatalytic N‐Doped Carbon/Alloy/Semiconductor Electrode for Localized Photothermic Electrocatalysis

et al. 2019

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and transportable renewable hydrogen fuel and valuable chemical feedstock. In view of this notion, photochemical, photoelectrochemical, and photovoltaic-driven electrochemical catalytic hydrogen and oxygen evolution are extensively studied. [6][7][8][9][10] Though photocatalysis involves direct conversion, it suffers from low solar energy absorption and conversion efficiency, the use of sacrificial agents, slow reaction rate, and instability. [11][12][13][14] To overcome these obstacles, photoelectrochemical strategy is explored as it holds the promise of a more efficient means. [14] Even that, it is hampered by the adversaries of semiconductor catalysts selection, photoelectrode preparation, limited spectral absorption, unsatisfactory reactivity and solar conversion efficiency. [13] Then, a roundabout way of photovoltaic-driven electrochemical water splitting via alkaline water electrolyzers was considered. [10,15] The technology can achieve a solar conversion efficiency over 15%, which is highly competitive, let alone the benefits of program controllability, sustainable productivity, and system upgradability with cheaper and more efficient photovoltaic cells. [15,16] Still, further efficiency improvement can be expected since the overall efficiency of electrochemical splitting of water is hindered by the inherent thermodynamics and sluggish kinetics, including high overpotential, low current density, and moderate energetic efficiency. [17][18][19][20][21][22] Despite immense efforts in designing various composition and structure to optimize the intrinsic activity of catalysts, the progress remains insufficient.Recently, supplementing thermal energy to perform catalytic conversion and vaporize water to surpass the conventional performances is attracting more attention. [23][24][25][26][27][28] Rationally, capitalizing the full potential of solar energy, beyond the limitation of UV light excitation, that are not absorbed by photo catalyst or photovoltaic cells for water splitting will undoubtedly augment the efficiency to further accelerate technological deployment. Hence the introduction of photothermal energy to electrochemical reaction can be a feasible pathway to facilitate enhanced solar energy conversion to chemical fuels. However, the biggest challenge lies in the discordant solar absorber electrode and electrolytic cell design. Typically, the catalyst is constructed in a form of film electrode, infiltrated Converting and storing intermittent solar energy into stable chemical fuels of high efficiency depend crucially on harvesting excess energy beyond the conventional ultraviolet light spectrum. The means of applying highly efficient solar-thermal conversion on practical electricity-driven water splitting could be a significant stride toward this goal, while some bottlenecks remain unresolved. Herein, photothermic electrocatalytic oxygen and hydrogen evolution reactions are proposed, which bestow a distinctive exothermic activation and electrochemical reactivity in a reconstructed electrolyzer system, and ...

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Mushrooms as Efficient Solar Steam‐Generation Devices

Cited by 972 publications

References 34 publications

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

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

Novel Receiver-Enhanced Solar Vapor Generation: Review and Perspectives

A Hybrid Solar Absorber–Electrocatalytic N‐Doped Carbon/Alloy/Semiconductor Electrode for Localized Photothermic Electrocatalysis

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