Smart Strategies for Light and Thermal Management in High‐Efficiency Solar Steam Generation

Abstract

Solar steam generation (SSG), a solar‐driven water purification technology based on ultrablack photothermal materials (PTMs) and sunlight, has attracted wide attention around the world. That is because SSGs can obtain pure water without consuming fossil energy to alleviate the shortage of drinking water around the world. So far, scientists have made many ingenious designs to improve the comprehensive performance of evaporators. Based on the structural design of PTMs, the light and thermal management strategies involved in SSGs are comprehensively summarized and discussed herein. Light management strategies include intrinsic light absorption and enhanced light absorption through structure designs of different scales to reduce reflected energy loss. Thermal management strategies include reducing conduction, radiation, convective heat loss, and even capture heat from the warm ambient for water evaporation. Using these strategies to carry out careful structure designs, the evaporators can achieve high evaporation rates and efficiencies close to or above the theoretical values. Prospects for the development of SSGs and the urgent problems that need to be solved are discussed. It is expected that this review guides researchers in exploring the fundamentals and design strategies of SSG and further guides device optimization.

Conductive Metal–Organic Framework Nanosheets Constructed Hierarchical Water Transport Biological Channel for High‐Performance Interfacial Seawater Evaporation

“…In addition, considering the advantages of construction and process design in enhancing evaporation performance, the 3D structure Ni 3 (HITP) 2 -paper evaporator is expected to obtain higher performance in the future. [48][49][50][51][52] Interestingly, the evaporation rate (2.60 kg m −2 h −1 ) outperforms the sum of the evaporation rates obtained through only electric energy-driven (0.71 kg m −2 h −1 ) and only solar energy-driven (1.61 kg m −2 h −1 ). This phenomenon is attributed to the solarelectric energy synergistic enhancement effects.…”

Membranes in Solar‐Driven Evaporation: Design Principles and Applications

“…Constructing 3D structures is an effective way to promote heat management and evaporation efficiency by reducing heat conduction and providing more area for environmental evaporation, which is worth considering in future design of membrane evaporators. [183] Although in-plane transport and 3D structure are becoming a prevailing trend, there remain some major challenges in membrane-based evaporation device design: 1) salt scaling within membrane pores during long-term evap-oration and 2) condensation and recovery of the generated vapor. The scaling problem originates from the pervasive conflict between heat transfer and mass transfer.…”

Achieving ultrahigh uranium/vanadium selectivity of poly(amidoxime) via coupling MXene-enabled strong intermolecular interaction and separated photothermal interface

“…On the one hand, owing to the lack of heat management, most designed photothermal interfaces undergo excessive heat dissipation, leading to a profound diminution in temperature-strengthened uranium affinity. 21 On the other hand, amidoxime groups in photothermal PAO-based sorbents are highly susceptible to spatial configuration transition, giving rise to the formation of stable coordination with vanadium over uranium. 22,23 Although many effective approaches have been exploited to stabilize the spatial configuration of amidoxime groups, these are normally at the expense of uranium adsorption capacity.…”