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Superheated solar steam generation above 100 °C is critical for many important applications such as sterilization but is challenging to achieve under natural fluctuating low-flux solar illumination and often requires pressurization and the usage of expensive optical concentrators. Herein, we demonstrate generation of superheated steam under ambient pressure and low-flux solar illumination by integrating a recently emerged interfacial evaporation design into a solar vacuum tube. Within the tube, the water vapor, which is generated by a high-efficiency localized heating-based evaporator, is further heated by a heat exchanger into superheated steam without pressurization. The steam generator has shown tunable steam temperature from 102 to 165 °C and solar-to-steam conversion efficiency from 26 to 49% under 1 sun illumination. Owing to the minimized heat loss from the solar vacuum tube and the interfacial evaporation design, it enables stable generation of steam above 121 °C under ambient fluctuating solar illumination with an averaged solar flux of ∼600 W/m 2 . Effective sterilization is verified using both the Geobacillus stearothermophilus biological indicator and Escherichia coli bacteria, making portable solar steam sterilization and other steam-related applications feasible under ambient solar illumination.

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Solar steam generation is critical for many important solar-thermal applications, but is challenging to achieve under low solar flux due to the large evaporation enthalpy of water. Here, we demonstrate a three-dimensional porous solar-driven interfacial evaporator that can generate 100 °C steam under 1 sun illumination with a record high solar-to-steam conversion efficiency of 48%. The high steam generation efficiency is achieved by localizing solar-thermal heating at the evaporation surface and controlling the water supply onto the porous evaporator through tuning its surface wettability, which prevents overheating of the evaporator and thus minimizes conductive, convective, and radiative heat losses from the evaporator. The design of steam outlet located at the sidewall of the evaporator rather than from the solar absorber surface not only facilitates the collection of generated steam, but also avoids potential blockage of solar radiation by the condensing steam. The high-efficiency solar-driven evaporator has been used to generate hot steam for outdoor removal of paraffin on the wall of oil pipelines, offering a promising solution to mitigate the wax deposition issue in petroleum extraction processes.

Converting solar energy into storable thermal energy within organic phase change materials has emerged as a promising way to overcome solar intermittency and continuously harness solar-thermal energy for many heating-related...