Carbonized Bamboos as Excellent 3D Solar Vapor‐Generation Devices

Bian, Yiyang; Du, Qianqian; Tang, Kun; Shen, Yonghang; Hao, Licai; Zhou, Dong; Wang, Xiaokun; Xu, Zhongwen; Zhang, Huiling; Zhao, Lijuan; Zhu, Suhua; Ye, Jiandong; Lu, Haiming; Yang, Yi; Zhang, Rong; Zheng, Yongjia; Gu, Shulin

doi:10.1002/admt.201800593

Cited by 125 publications

(99 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…[ 33 ] Gu and coworkers revealed that bamboo can be an excellent 3D solar vapor‐generation device with an extremely high evaporation rate of 3.13 kg m −2 h −1 under 1 sun irradiation by a three‐step carbonization method, and the bamboo‐based evaporator has the advantages of low‐cost, self‐cleaning, solid durable, and scalable. [ 34 ] In our previous work, the extremely cheap carbonized kelp (≈3.8 $ m −2 ) with good stability, high solar absorption (≈93%), porous microstructure, and hydrophilic surface was found to be efficient for SSG and seawater desalination, an evaporation rate of 1.351 kg m −2 h −1 was attained under 1 sun irradiation. Moreover, a capillarity‐driven interfacial self‐coating method was developed to prepare the super‐hydrophilic photothermal layer based on carbonized towel‐gourd sponges, which exhibited a high evaporation rate of 1.53 kg m −2 h −1 under 1 sun irradiation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Concentrated Acid‐Induced Dehydration of Fallen Leaves for Efficient, Sustainable, and Self‐Cleaning Solar Steam Generation

Shan

Xiong

Sheng

et al. 2020

Adv Energy and Sustain Res

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To develop solar steam generation (SGG) for water treatment, light absorbers have been widely synthesized by carbonization of plants at high temperature. However, the thermal treatment has high energy‐consumption and is environmentally unfriendly. Thus, it is urgent to explore new green approaches to convert biomasses to carbon materials for SSG. Herein, a concentrated acid‐induced dehydration method is developed to convert fallen leaves to carbon powders, fallen‐leaf photothermal film prepared by dehydration (FLPD). The resultant FLPD exhibits a strong absorption covering a wide spectrum. It also contains sufficient oxygen‐containing groups on the surface, leading to low water evaporation enthalpy. To meet the demands of practical applications, the FLPD membrane is modified with polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) to improve the mechanical stabilities and the surface wettability is further enhanced by an oxygen plasma treatment. An SSG device based on the modified membrane attains a competitive evaporation rate of 1.355 kg m−2 h−1 under 1 sun irradiation. The evaporation rate remains approximately constant when evaporating the seawater. Moreover, the salt deposited on the surface could be self‐cleaned due to the high wettability. Therefore, herein, it is demonstrated that concentrated acid‐induced dehydration is an effective and green approach to convert cheap biomasses to carbon materials for SSG applications.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Concentrated Acid‐Induced Dehydration of Fallen Leaves for Efficient, Sustainable, and Self‐Cleaning Solar Steam Generation

Shan

Xiong

Sheng

et al. 2020

Adv Energy and Sustain Res

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“…The reduced h VCMF has also been found in other literatures, like in hierarchically nanostructured gel, porous cellulose membrane, and carbonized bamboos. The reduction is possibly attributed to the cluster escape mode of water molecules …”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Carbonized Tree‐Like Furry Magnolia Fruit‐Based Evaporator Replicating the Feat of Plant Transpiration

et al. 2019

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It has long been an aspirational goal to create artificial evaporators that allow omnidirectional energy absorptance, adequate water supply, and fast vapor transportation, replicating the feat of plant transpiration, to solve the global water crisis. This work reveals that magnolia fruits, as a kind of tree‐like living organism, can be outstanding 3D tree‐like evaporators through a simple carbonization process. The arterial pumping, branched diffusion, and confined evaporation are achieved by the “trunk,” “branches,” and “leaves,” respectively, of the mini tree. The mini tree possesses omnidirectional high light absorptance with minimized heat loss and gains energy from the environment. Water confined in the fruit possesses reduced vaporization enthalpy and transports quickly following the Murray's law. A record‐high vapor generation rate of 1.22 kg m−2 h−1 in dark and 3.15 kg m−2 h−1 under 1 sun illumination is achieved under the assistance of the gully‐like furry surface. The “absorption of nutrients” enables the fruit to recover valuable heavy metals as well as to produce clean water from wastewater efficiently. These findings not only reveal the hidden talent of magnolia fruits as cheap materials for vapor generation but also inspire future development of high‐performance, full‐time, and all‐weather vapor generation and water treatment devices.

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“…Natural materials like wood, mushroom, food waste, flour, cotton, daikon, bamboo, etc., after a common thermal treatment, namely carbonization, can obtain excellent light‐absorbing ability, and thus are widely employed in solar evaporation systems. [ 70–79 ] These low‐cost natural materials are of great abundance, which befits future large‐scale applications.…”

Section: Design Principles To Approach 100% Efficiencymentioning

confidence: 99%

Structure Architecting for Salt‐Rejecting Solar Interfacial Desalination to Achieve High‐Performance Evaporation With In Situ Energy Generation

et al. 2020

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requirement has given rise to research thrusts being focused on the development of solar-driven evaporation based desalination technologies. [4][5][6][7] The research on using solar energy in the desalination process has a long history. [3,8,9] In a traditional singleslope basin-like solar still (Figure 1a), saline water is heated and subsequently evaporated by directly exposing to solar radiation. Solar energy is absorbed and converted into thermal energy by a black light-absorbing liner that is situated at the bottom of the solar basin. [10] Due to this design, the solar absorber is immersed in bulk seawater and it hardly receives a fraction of the incoming solar radiation owing to poor light penetration through the thick water layer. Furthermore, the produced heat is easily dissipated into the bulk water, and further lost to the surroundings through water surface radiation, convection and conduction. Due to the above reasons, the resulting solar-tosteam conversion efficiency is inevitably low. Nanoparticle dispersed fluid was then demonstrated to harness solar energy and found to be a great boon to direct water vapor generation. [11,12] A solar conversion efficiency of up to ≈70% can be possibly achieved because heat loss to bulk water is mitigated ( Figure 1b). [13,14] However, research on this advancement didn't last because of the development of solar interfacial heating strategy, which is shown in Figure 1c. The concept of interfacial evaporation was first put forth in 2014 by two reports simultaneously, [15,16] and received a surge of attention and interest immediately in the following years. The most prominent feature of solar interfacial evaporation lies in the position of the solar absorber, which is at the interface between saline liquid and the above air. This special configuration not only minimizes heat loss from the solar absorber to bulk water, but also provides significantly more surface area for prompt vapor release. Also, solar radiation is photothermally localized at the surface of solar absorber, giving rise to high surface temperature, which enables fast heat transfer to water. With it, water transported from reservoir can be heated and evaporated immediately to achieve a higher rate of steam generation. In addition to the differences in heating strategies, it should be noted that all the solar stills follow the same evaporation-condensation route for desalination and clean water collection, and to this end, a similar device structure (e.g., solar still with sloping cover) is usually employed.The past few years have witnessed a rapid development of solar-driven interfacial evaporation, a promising technology for low-cost water desalination. As of today, solar-to-steam conversion efficiencies close to 100% or even beyond the limit are becoming increasingly achievable in virtue of unique photothermal materials and structures. Herein, the cutting-edge approaches are summarized, and their mechanisms for photothermal structure architecting are uncovered in order to achieve ultrahigh conversion e...

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Carbonized Bamboos as Excellent 3D Solar Vapor‐Generation Devices

Cited by 125 publications

References 30 publications

Concentrated Acid‐Induced Dehydration of Fallen Leaves for Efficient, Sustainable, and Self‐Cleaning Solar Steam Generation

Concentrated Acid‐Induced Dehydration of Fallen Leaves for Efficient, Sustainable, and Self‐Cleaning Solar Steam Generation

Carbonized Tree‐Like Furry Magnolia Fruit‐Based Evaporator Replicating the Feat of Plant Transpiration

Structure Architecting for Salt‐Rejecting Solar Interfacial Desalination to Achieve High‐Performance Evaporation With In Situ Energy Generation

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