Jiugang Li  Can Ge  Jiahao He  Xinpeng Jin  Chong He  Keshuai Liu  Duo Xu  Wenbin Li 《Advanced Materials Technologies》2024,9(2):2301368

Solar-driven interfacial evaporation is an environmentally friendly and sustainable freshwater-production technology with substantial market potential. Nonetheless, it encounters significant challenges related to energy-conversion efficiency and resistance to salt crystallization. Thus, a towel-inspired fabric-based evaporator (TFE) containing various functional layers using carbon and cotton-polyester-blended fibers is designed and woven. The surface of the TFE is woven into a towel-ring structure, which affords a high sunlight-contact area and a superior sunlight absorption rate of 96.2%. In contrast, the hydrophilic layer at the bottom of the TFE delivers superior water-molecule storage and conduction due to its multilayer corner-interlocking fabric structure. Compared to commercial fabric-based evaporators, the loop structure of the towel fabric enables water molecules to flow rapidly under the influence of wind, which effectively enhances the evaporation rate of the TFE. The optimal TFE can reach a high water-evaporation rate of 3.72 kg m⁻² h⁻¹ under 1 kW m⁻² sunlight and a wind speed of 2 m s⁻¹, which is ascribable to sunlight/wind synergy. No precipitated salt is detected on the TFE surface after continuously evaporating a 3.5 wt.% NaCl solution for 8 h. These exceptional attributes position the TFE as a highly suitable candidate for diverse seawater desalination applications.  相似文献   

    

Hashim H. Migaybil  Hisham A. Maddah  Bhushan Gopaluni 《加拿大化工杂志》2023,101(6):3059-3073

Water is an essential component of our lives. Conventional seawater desalination, based on fossil fuel energy, is primary in meeting freshwater demands. Thus, solar desalination still emerged as an alternative technology that employs environmentally friendly renewable energy. Here, we aim to design and simulate a novel hybrid solar photovoltaic (PV) system coupled with a single-slope solar still unit for freshwater production. Various design techniques were utilized to fine-tune the model towards producing 3–4.6 kg/m² · day of distillate water, thereby calculating the design aspects such as tank size, energy, and cost. The results revealed that a conventional solar desalination system had 22% lower efficiency than the proposed novel still distillation unit assisted with a solar PV system (connected to a heating element). The maximum efficiency of 45% has been recorded at the peak solar insolation due to the combination of the solar PV system. According to our design constraints, only a 3 m² basin area was required to achieve a productivity of  = 1–5 kg/day. Design analysis showed that the total capital cost of a conventional still can be significantly reduced from 2600 to 1500 $/unit with PV system integration at the specified productivity and optimal solar radiation of ~17 MJ/m² · day at peak time (02.00 PM). This work paves the way towards maximizing solar energy utilization from PV integration with solar desalination to achieve high freshwater productivity in single-basin solar still systems.  相似文献   

    

Baozheng Cui  Xuelong Chen  Lina Chen  Jingbo Zhu  Caiyan Zhang  Ningjing Bai  Wei Wang  Huixin Wang  Dongyu Zhao  Zewen Li  Haijun Niu  Zhe Wang 《应用聚合物科学杂志》2024,141(17):e55279

Solar-driven steam generation membranes have garnered increasing attention for freshwater production. Nonetheless, the adverse impact of salt accumulation on membrane surfaces directly undermines the efficacy of solar evaporation. In this work, one type of composite membrane comprised of carbon nanotubes (CNTs)-styrene-ethylene-butadiene-styrene (SEBS) was fabricated by modified vapor phase pore-forming technique. Through the grafting of maleic anhydride (MAH), the CNTs-SEBS-MAH composite membrane was successfully hydrolyzed. As a consequence, the composite membrane exhibits evaporation rate as high as 1.28 kg m⁻² h⁻¹ under one sun solar irradiation, accompanied by an outstanding solar vapor conversion efficiency of 87.5%. In addition, the fabricated composite membrane has high resistance to salt accumulation, as well as self-cleaning capability. This work provides a route for manufacturing hydrophilic polymer composite membrane towards solar energy driven seawater desalination.  相似文献   

    

Hong Zhang;Ashraf Morsy;S. Kandil;Hassan A. Ewais;Ahmed H. Abdel-Salam;E. Kenawy;N. S. Yousef;F. Shokry;Tarek M. Abdel-Fattah;Sh. Ebrahim; 《Polymer Engineering and Science》2024,64(5):2278-2288

Cellulose diacetate (CDA) and triacetate (CTA) were derived from Egyptian cotton to fabricate reverse osmosis (RO) membranes. The Pphase inversion method was utilized for the production of CDA-based membranes. Comprehensive characterization of these membranes involved structural, morphologial, and hydrophilic property analyses through techniques such as nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), infrared spectroscopy, thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), and contact angle measurements. NMR spectra indicated a degree of substitution of 2.9 for CTA and 2 for CDA. The resulting RO membrane demonstrated a water flux of 6.1 L/m2·h and a salt rejection of 90.3%. Annealing led to an enhanced top layer with reduced defects and macrovoids in the support layer. Moreover, grafting the RO membranes with 15 wt% of 2-acrylamidopropane-2-methyl sulphonic acid improved salt rejection to 96.2% and water flux to 8.7 L/m2.h. These findings underscore the significant performance enhancements achieved through both annealing and grafting processes in RO membranes.  相似文献   

    

Guang-Jin Zhao  Lu-Lu Li  Hai-Qi Gao  Zhi-Jian Zhao  Zi-Fan Pang  Chun-Lei Pei  Zhou Qu  Liang-Liang Dong  De-Wei Rao  Jürgen Caro  Hong Meng 《Advanced functional materials》2024,34(18):2313026

Efficient thin film composite polyamide (PA) membranes require optimization of interfacial polymerization (IP) process. However, it is challengeable owing to its ultrafast reaction rate coupled with mass and heat transfer, yielding heterogeneous PA membranes with low performance. Herein, a non-isothermal-controlled IP (NIIP) method is proposed to fabricate a highly permeable and selective PA membrane by engineering IP at the cryogenic aqueous phase (CAP) to achieve synchronous control of heat and mass transfer in the interfacial region. The CAP also enables the phase transition of the aqueous solution from the liquid to solid state, providing a more comprehensive understanding of the fundamental mechanisms involved in different phase states in the IP process. Consequently, the PA membrane exhibits excellent separation performance with ultrahigh water permeance (42.9 L m⁻² h⁻¹ bar⁻¹) and antibiotic desalination efficiency (antibiotic/NaCl selectivity of 159.3). This study provides new insights for the in-depth understanding of the precise mechanism linking IP to the performance of the targeting membrane.  相似文献   

    

Yuanjie Gu  Danning Wang  Ying Gao  Yiying Yue  Weisheng Yang  Changtong Mei  Xinwu Xu  Yong Xu  Huining Xiao  Jingquan Han 《Advanced functional materials》2023,33(43):2306947

Recent research on wood-based solar evaporators has made great progress and significant breakthroughs have been made in using lignin as a photothermal material; however, the intensity change mechanism regarding the conjugate structure of lignin is almost never mentioned. This study innovatively proposes a mechanism to explain the changes in conjugate intensity that occur before and after lignin dissolution and fabricates a lignin/wood-based solar evaporator (LWE) using an all-wood-based material that is salt-tolerant and has long-term serviceability. Lignin in the evaporator serves not only as a photothermal material for converting light energy into heat energy but also as a reinforcement for the evaporator's structural strength. Adding lignin changes the original structure of balsa wood, increasing the proportion of intermediate water in the LWE, thereby lowering the enthalpy of water evaporation. The optimized LWE with an enhanced desalination capability, dye removal property, and high stability exhibits full-spectrum solar absorption of about 83.6%, a photothermal conversion efficiency of 91.74%, and an evaporation efficiency of 1.93 kg m⁻² h⁻¹, which surpasses most wood-based evaporators. This study demonstrates that all-wood-based materials can be used to prepare evaporators with excellent performance, providing a new approach to address freshwater depletion.  相似文献   

    

Zhongyi Chen  Jing Wang  Haijun Zhou  Zongming Xie  Lei Shao  Aizheng Chen  Shi-Bin Wang  Nina Jiang 《Advanced functional materials》2023,33(41):2303656

Photothermal conversion, heat localization and water supply are the keys to achieving efficient solar-driven interfacial evaporation. However, effective coupling between the three aspects at the air/liquid interface remains challenging. Herein, Au@Ag-Pd trimetallic nanostructure/polystyrene (PS) microsphere Janus structures are designed as the solar absorber and thermal insulator. The Janus structures deposited on a water supply layer act as a 2D interfacial solar evaporator. The PS microsphere localizes heat at micrometer scale and enhances plasmonic absorption of the Au@Ag-Pd nanocrystals supported on the microsphere. Meanwhile, the Janus structures divide the surface of water supply layer into multiple regions with sub-micrometer depths, lowering the evaporation enthalpy. Owing to the synergic effects of these components, the evaporator realizes a solar-to-vapor conversion efficiency of 99.1% and an evaporation rate of 3.04 kg m⁻² h⁻¹ in pure water under 1 sun illumination. The efficient solar-driven evaporation can last for over 40 h. Furthermore, the solar evaporator shows high-performance seawater desalination with salt removal ratios of near 100%. This study brings new insights for controlling evaporation thermodynamics and kinetics. The Janus nano-micro structure design can be extended to other systems for various solar-thermal applications.  相似文献   

    

Sebastian Bernhard Rauer  Siqi Wang  Niklas Köller  Daniel Josef Bell  Yunpeng Zhang  Xuejiao Wang  Christian J. Linnartz  Matthias Wessling  John Linkhorst 《Advanced functional materials》2023,33(38):2303606

Activated carbon (AC) particles constitute the current material of choice concerning the preparation of flow electrodes for flow-electrode capacitive deionization (FCDI). They are inexpensive, mass-producible, highly conductive, and exhibit a large specific surface area for ion adsorption. However, despite recent advances concerning the modification of AC slurries, their density, and hydrophobicity still constitute major challenges regarding particle aggregation, sedimentation, and pumpability, restricting their particle load to approximately 25 wt.%. Since the particle volume fraction directly correlates to the chance of particle contact, which dictates the charge transfer and hence the degree of flow electrode utilization, the development of AC-based slurries seems to stagnate. This study addresses these challenges by investigating poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT:PSS)-based suspensions as an alternative to conventional carbon-based flow electrodes. The corresponding conductive hydrogel particles feature softness, internal porosity, low density, hydrophilicity, and a mass-specific salt adsorption capacity that exceeds AC by up to ten times. FCDI experiments can reveal that, contrary to AC, the inherent properties of PEDOT:PSS-based particles simplify the slurry preparation process and enable flow electrode circulation at significantly higher particle volume fractions. These results suggest that PEDOT:PSS-based hydrogel particles are a promising candidate to overcome the percolation and contact-related challenges of state-of-the-art AC slurries.  相似文献   

    

Hao Li  Weixin Zhang  Jiawei Liu  Mingze Sun  Li Wang  Lizhi Xu 《Advanced functional materials》2023,33(47):2308492

Hydrogel-based solar evaporators (HSEs) emerged as energy-efficient designs for water purification due to the reduced vaporization enthalpy in the hydrated polymeric network. However, it remains challenging for HSEs to achieve stable performance in desalination, partly due to the tradeoff between desired evaporation dynamics and salt tolerance. Here, composite hydrogels with tunable self-assembled nanofiber networks are exploited for the engineering of solar evaporators with both high evaporation performance and resistance to salt accumulation. The nanofibrous hydrogel solar evaporators (NHSEs) present an intrinsic open network with high porosity, above 90%, enabling continuous water channels for efficient mass transfer. Theoretical modeling captures the complex nexus between microstructures and evaporation performance by coupling water transfer, thermal conduction, and vaporization enthalpy during evaporation. The mechanistic understanding and engineering tuning of the composites lead to an optimum configuration of NHSEs, which demonstrate a stable evaporation rate of 2.85 kg m⁻² h⁻¹ during continuous desalination in 20% brine. The outstanding performance of NHSEs and the underlying design principles may facilitate further development of practical desalination systems.  相似文献   

    

Yang Bao  Jinxin Hao  Shu Zhang  Dechun Zhu  Feihu Li 《Small (Weinheim an der Bergstrasse, Germany)》2023,19(34):2300384

Prussian blue analogs (PBAs) represent a crucial class of intercalation electrode materials for electrochemical water desalination. It is shown here that structural/compositional tailoring of PBAs, the nickel hexacyanoferrate (NiHCF) electrodes in particular, can efficiently modulate their capacitive deionization (CDI) performance (e.g., desalination capacity, cyclability, selectivity, etc.). Both the desalination capacity and the cyclability of NiHCF electrodes are highly dependent on their structural/compositional features such as crystallinity, morphology, hierarchy, and coatings. It is demonstrated that the CDI cell with hierarchically structured NiHCF nanoframe (NiHCF-NF) electrode exhibits a superior desalination capacity of 121.38 mg g⁻¹, a high charge efficiency of up to 82%, and a large capacity retention of 88% after 40 cycles intercalation/deintercalation. In addition, it is discovered that coating of carbon (C) film over NiHCF can lower its desalination capacity owing to the partial blockage of diffusion openings by the coated C film. Moreover, the hierarchical NiHCF-NF electrode also demonstrates a superior selectivity toward monovalent sodium ions (Na⁺) over divalent calcium (Ca²⁺) and magnesim (Mg²⁺) ions, allowing it to be a promising platform for preferential capturing Na⁺ ions from brines. Overall, the structural/compositional tailoring strategies would offer a viable option for the rational design of other intercalation electrode materials applied in CDI techniques.  相似文献