A novel composite hydrogel for solar evaporation enhancement at air-water interface

Zhao, Liang; Wang, Peisen; Tian, Jing; Wang, Jihui; Li, Lin; Xu, Ling; Wang, Yi; Xu, Fei; Li, Yao

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.02.407

Cited by 92 publications

(46 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…More remarkably, SAG's water collection rate reached 7.18 kg m −2 h −1 under one sun irradiation, see Figure 4f. Since the purification mechanism does not require water evaporation, an energy-intensive process, the water collection rate is higher than those that do rely on evaporation: poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA), [11,14,[33][34][35][36][37][38] alginate (SA), [12,39] chitosan (CS), [40][41][42] polyacrylamide (PAAm), [43,44] poly(sodium acrylate) (PSA), [45] silica gel, [46] poly(ionic liquid)s (PILs), [47] poly(ethylene glycol) diacrylate (PEGDA), [48] and agarose [49] (see Figure 4f). The high water collection rate of SAG is due to the thermoresponsive phase transformation of PNIPAm, which boosts the liquid water release at the LCST.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Bioinspired Elastic Hydrogel for Solar‐Driven Water Purification

et al. 2021

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The global demand for clean and safe water will continue to grow well into the 21st century. Moving forward, the lack of access to clean water, which threatens human health and strains precious energy resources, will worsen as the climate changes. Therefore, future innovations that produce potable water from contaminated sources must be sustainable. Inspired by nature, a solar absorber gel (SAG) is developed to purify water from contaminated sources using only natural sunlight. The SAG is composed of an elastic thermoresponsive poly(N‐isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAm) hydrogel, a photothermal polydopamine (PDA) layer, and a sodium alginate (SA) network. Production of the SAG is facile; all processing is aqueous‐based and occurs at room temperature. Remarkably, the SAG can purify water from various harmful reservoirs containing small molecules, oils, metals, and pathogens, using only sunlight. The SAG relies on solar energy to drive a hydrophilic/hydrophobic phase transformation at the lower critical solution temperature. Since the purification mechanism does not require water evaporation, an energy‐intensive process, the passive solar water‐purification rate is the highest reported. This discovery can be transformative in the sustainable production of clean water to improve the quality of human life.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Bioinspired Elastic Hydrogel for Solar‐Driven Water Purification

et al. 2021

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“…Through the hydrophilic network structure of the hydrogel, water can be transported to the evaporation surface to achieve continuous solar water evaporation. [ 34–36 ] The commonly used photothermal materials are metallic nanoparticles, [ 37–39 ] carbon‐based materials, [ 40,41 ] and semiconductor materials. [ 42–44 ] PEDOT is a dark conductive polymer rich in conjugated π bonds, which has good electrical conductivity and is also a potential photothermal conversion material based on almost 100% absorption of light in the wavelength range of 900–2000 nm.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A High Strength Hydrogel with a Core–Shell Structure Simultaneously Serving as Strain Sensor and Solar Water Evaporator

Peng

Tang

Wang

et al. 2021

Macro Materials & Eng

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A super‐strong poly (acrylic acid)‐ poly(3,4‐ethylene dioxythiophene) (PAA‐PEDOT) hydrogel with a unique core‐shell structure is successfully constructed and studied. The shell composed of the conductive polymer PEDOT makes the composite hydrogel possess mechanical strength, electrical conductivity, and photothermal conversion properties, while the PAA hydrogel core ensures the flexibility, recovery, and water absorption of the composite hydrogel. The prepared PAA‐PEDOT hydrogel displays outstanding tensile strength (up to 780 KPa) and satisfactory conductivity (6.6 S m−1). Notably, the flexible strain sensor made of PAA‐PEDOT composite hydrogel presents both high sensitivity (gauge factor up to 8.87) and short response time (<200 ms), demonstrating that the composite hydrogel can accurately and timely detect the movement of human joints. In addition, PAA‐PEDOT composite hydrogel also has excellent photothermal conversion properties and can be used as a highly efficient solar water evaporator, which has a water evaporation efficiency of up to 3.05 kg m−2 h and an excellent photothermal conversion efficiency of 95% under 1‐sun irradiation (1kW m−2). These features make the composite hydrogel has great potential in many fields such as motion sensing, seawater desalination, and wastewater treatment.

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“…33 It is noted that a solar water purification system containing reduced graphene oxide (rGO) generally exhibits a relatively high evaporation rate (2.33 -2.72 kg m -2 h -1 ) and higher energy conversion efficiency ( > 90%) compared to the systems based on graphene and graphene oxide (GO). 59,63,74,77,[102][103][104][105][106][107][108][109][110][111][112][113][114][115][116][117][118][119] This result may be attributed to the residual As the youngest carbon nanomaterials, carbon dots (CDs) [132][133][134] have attracted attention due to their broad light absorption spectrum (200-800 nm) and high photothermal conversion efficiency (> 90%), so that CDs can meet the requirements of solar absorbers. 135 To further improve the performance of CDs for solar water purification, future development directions include structure adjustment and surface group modification without lowering crystallinity or wetting properties.…”

Section: Carbon-based Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%